Review Summary: A lovable album from a great group, but lacking in ambition and variety
“Breach” represents The Wallflowers at their innovative peak. The Wallflowers expanded from their hit-making roots, creating eleven songs of highly different styles and textures. In contrast, “Red Letter Days” represents something safe and familiar: at best, a fun return to the band’s hit-making success on “Bringing Down the Horse”, at worst a creative cop-out. “Breach” is a 5-star restaurant; “Red Letter Days” is an Apple Bee’s. It’s fine if you lower your expectations. “Red Letter Days” bears a great deal of similarity with the later half of “Bringing Down Horse”. It’s a collection of fast, fun, and mostly unmemorable songs.
But one must not be too hard on The Wallflowers. The quality of “Red Letter Days” is consistently high, and the decision to play more mainstream is understandable, though the effort ultimately proved futile. For all the positive reviews, the sales of “Breach” fell far behind the colossal success of “Bringing Down the Horse”, and The Wallflowers had plenty of reason to believe that their classical rock/folk style had grown hopelessly outdated. Here, the guitar parts are fast and the group’s energy is high. Unfortunately, album sales were low, and only “When You’re On Top” had any notable popularity as a single.
The songs on “Red Letter Days” are a lot of fun all the way through, and they’re always easy to listen to. Nearly all consist of a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus, with the chorus including the song title, and nearly all are loud, exciting, and upbeat. In fact, “Red Letter Days” may be the most bluntly happy album I’ve come across (although I haven’t heard all that many). Just read the song titles: “Health and Happiness”, “Feels Like Summer Again”, “As Good As It Gets”, “When You’re on Top”, etc.
Although still tightly structured, “Three Ways” is the most unique-sounding song on the album. It’s also my favorite, boasting a playful, whimsical sound. The only Wallflower’s song that sounds anything like it is “Baby Bird” from “Breach”. It’s sweet, catchy, and pleasurable, with some of the group’s best lyrics. “There’s three ways off a burning bridge/You either jump or you learn how to swim/There’s three ways off of every burning bridge”, like several similar lines, makes one wonder about the third way; it’s the kind of intriguing, paradoxical phrase that first made The Wallflowers well-known.
The closing song, “Here In Pleasantville”, is another gem. The lyrics aren’t as frustratingly simple as in many of the other songs, opening with “If you could see yourself the way that I do/You might change a thing or two” and adding a dark edge the album desperately needs by implying something more ominous than the relaxed, free-spirited music suggests, such as when Jakob sings “Something’s gone/So terribly wrong/Here in Pleasantville”. The mid-tempo, faintly acoustic guitar line works beautifully.
The hidden track “Empire in My Mind” works quite well in its position. It’s mysterious and cool. That being said, it would have helped the album even more if it were placed earlier to break up the remaining ten tracks that basically just offer slightly different variations on a catchy, completely consistent formula. Of these songs, the deafening “Everybody Out of the Water” is an album highlight. Driven by loud guitar strumming, the song inspires feelings of panic and excitement, countering “Nobody panic/Help is on it’s way” with the “Everybody out of the water/Get up on dry land/Take what you can”.
The first song “When Your On Top” sets the mood appropriately. It’s nowhere near “One Headlight” or “Letters from the Wasteland” and, to its credit, it doesn’t aspire to be. It’s perhaps the most invigorating song on the album. Think fast, fun, and nothing really special. The same goes for “As Good As It Gets”, which I like quite a bit more for the textured electric guitar parts. “You won’t believe how good it’s gonna get/We’re gonna make a lover out of you yet” is typical of the album: nice and forgettable.
“Closer to You” is astonishingly beautiful. Dylan’s voice, sometimes accused of lacking in vocal range, shines through the main lyric. It’s as radio-friendly as The Wallflowers can be, and completely harmless. “Too Late to Quit” goes nowhere new, but stands up with “When Your On Top” for its frantic energy. Here Dylan is wild and rebellious, shouting out “I’m tired/I’m tired/I’m much too tired” impatiently. The chanting “Too late to quit/Too soon to go home” is in a word “cool”.
“If You Never Got Sick” marks the start of the repetitive second half. Dylan is shouting in appealing desperation, but the song is disappointingly generic. Just listen to the main chorus “Baby if you never got sick/I wouldn’t get to hold you”. Fun, but profound? No. “See You When I Get There”, “Feels Like Summer Again”, and “Everything I Need” follow suit. “See You” benefits from the pairing of Dylan with Courtney Kaiser, “Summer” suffers from having no real distinguishing features (which, in a sense, is its own trait), and “Need” carries an engaging tone of invincibility.
The only notably slow song, “Health and Happiness”, is, surprisingly, the only one that’s downbeat. Dylan wishes health and happiness “and absolutely nothing else” with vengeance, further contributing to his tough-guy image that’s prevalent throughout the album. It’s actually only song I dislike here, mainly because the music is all-but absent aside from decent but forgettable percussion. The song lumbers along, and eventually Dylan runs out of ideas, spending the final minute or so repeating the main line.
As with “Bringing Down the Horse”, I must rate the album as less than the sum of its parts. About six songs in, it sounds like The Wallflowers are really going to pull off something special, but every song in the second half besides “Here in Pleasantville” and “Empire in My Mind” simply offers nothing new. The problem is so extreme that earlier tunes, like “When You’re On Top”, are actually hurt a bit; the redundancies make them appear less fresh and original. I’d easily give this album 3.5 or maybe even 4 just for the individual song quality, but as a unified work I think a “Good” rating of 3/5 works best. The Wallflowers aren’t doing anything new here, but it’s a solid album, a must for fans or anybody seeking to put themselves in a good mood.
I can’t help but lamenting the fact that brilliant line’s like “One Headlight” ‘s “Come and try a little/Nothing is forever/There’s got to be something better than in the middle/Me and Cinderella/Put it all together/We can drive it home/With one headlight” have now been replaced by “I feel fine with the sun in my eyes/The wind in my hair/Falling out of this sky/I’m doing better than I thought I would/And nothing’s as good as when you’re on top” from the opening track. This is a group I love, and there is more than enough good music on “Red Letter Days”. It may be a fall from greatness, but it’s an enjoyable fall nonetheless.
