One-man power pop band expands his musical and thematic horizons

Since breaking into the underground of power pop aficionados with 1991’s Hey Man!, Richard X. Heyman has released a consistently excellent catalog of pop records. Even more impressive is the singular voice he’s developed by writing all of his own material and playing nearly all the instruments. He augments his bass, guitar, piano, organ and drums with harpsichord, marimba, mellotron, vibraphone and a brilliant array of percussion. He’s sufficiently comfortable as a player, producer and singer to keep his work from sounding like an overdubbing fest, and he expands on his core instrumental talents with guests who add strings, horns and woodwinds. His early proficiency on drums provides his one-man band a sense of time that’s steady but not tensely metronomic; there are musical and rhythmic conversations among his instruments, he just happens to be playing them all.

Heyman has deepened his craft over the years, but he’s done so without sacrificing the basic joys of music making. This double-disc (which he views as two albums, rather than a double-album) is an introspective look at married life, from the earliest days of courtship to the comfortable settling of a life partnership. The sketches of serendipitous meetings, romantic premonitions, youthful left turns, twenty-something freedoms, maturing emotional needs and realized commitments tell of a relationship whose circuitous route turns out to be a circle. It’s a path that will be familiar to most anyone who’s looked into the mirror of their own long-term relationships. Along the way, Heyman has a chance meeting with his future wife, develops the acquaintance into a relationship, leaves to make a career in Los Angeles, makes a name for himself on the West Coast, gets burned by the music industry, flames out and realizes that the life he wants to live is 3000 miles away.

Heyman’s an excellent storyteller (see a few examples of his prose here), and his feel for the longer form translates nicely into a pop opera whose songs form chapters in a larger arc. The second disc of this set, And Other Stories, provides a coda for the song cycle of Tiers, looking at the contented doings of a married couple, the characters of city life and the rhythms of passing seasons. Even Heyman’s consideration of mortality, “Baby Boom,” is inquiring and philosophical, rather than dark or fearful. Both discs tint Heyman’s pop roots with complex changes that draw his voice from its usual Stevie Winwood-esque sound to the more unusual style of Donald Fagan. There are touches of country, baroque-pop (reminiscent of the Left Banke’s Michael Brown), and even some Rockin’ Berries-styled harmonies on “Yellow and Blue.” And Other Stories hasn’t the thematic focus of Tiers, but the quality of Heyman’s work never wears out its welcome. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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