Streets of New York
Those mean streets sound awfully clean on the latest from veteran bard Willie Nile, who here exchanges his raucous rock from the early 1980s for a more tempered approach that prizes poetry over punch. Though the songwriting remains as heartfelt as ever, with plenty of literary flourish, antiseptic arrangements all but drain the propulsion from "Welcome to My Head" and "Best Friends Money Can Buy," while the slow build of "Faded Flower of Broadway" flirts with power-ballad mawkishness. The epic narrative of the autobiographical "Back Home" and the harmonic-laced "Lonesome Dark-Eyed Beauty" find Nile giving his best Bob Dylan impression (Dylan's son Jakob, of the Wallflowers, guests elsewhere on the album), though the title track edges closer to Billy Joel territory. Only the heart-pumping urgency of "Whole World with You" and the feverish cover of Eddy Grant's "Police on My Back" (in homage to the Clash) show Nile really letting it rip as he as in the past.--Don McLeese