Review Summary: Truth in advertising? It's not without moments, and the great songs are great, but the average cuts on Rough Diamond are the most mediocre in a while.
There are a few albums with names containing hilarious applications either in hindsight or at the time. Faith No More's Album Of The Year, right before their long hiatus. Frost*'s Experiments In Mass Appeal, their most watered down effort yet. The Black Eyed Peas' The Beginning, which followed their last album The E.N.D. and ironically turned out to be way less successful and more or less caused the band to break up. A potential addition to that list is Dave Hole's Rough Diamond. Not because it's a shining beacon in a discography of mediocrity; his discography has remained surprisingly consistent for a man of his age and background. Rather, several songs on this album can be considered diamonds in the rough; bright lights of brilliant composition and fretwork surrounded by tunes the kind of which are really starting to wear thin.
Dave Hole does not seem like a stupid man, and feels like he tossed away his massive tendencies for self-indulgence a fair few albums back. Most songs on here at the very least try to do something at least a little different for Hole, give him some room to express himself in a way he hasn't touched upon yet, and indeed, the guitar techniques have been broadened further still, high praise for an album this late into his career. Even the motifs that have an air of abrasiveness to them, like the harmonic strumming on I'm A King Bee and some mild polytonal work on Something Inside Of Me, add flavour to proceedings. It's just always nice to hear Hole rip it up in a way he hasn't quite before.
But this is definitely his biggest trip back to his blues roots in quite some time, with many tracks which he manages to make listenable but only by a hair. Can't Stop Loving You has some interesting digressions but is still overlong, and the exact same thing can be said of King Bee, whose weird spoken word break isn't enough to detract from a six minute runtime. Since I Met You Baby features an usual descending pattern within the twelve bar structure, but even for Dave Hole, this seems like a pithy curveball to call a real spark of inspiration. There's just no escaping that this is his most forgettable work since Under The Spell, and that album felt like it had more elbow grease across the board.
That said, the cuts that are great on here are definitely sharp. The almost title track, Rough Diamond Child, is forged on a nice blues/funk fusion groove with winding solos and pre-chorus key changes to match. Vintage Wine is also an easy highlight, featuring one of Hole's dirtiest tones feeding into a gnarly background through which he rips some more inspired solo work and a booming vocal performance that matches really well with the rest of the song. And White Trash Girl, which I expected to hate from the title, is actually one of Hole's best jaunty rockers, with a take on the La Grange riff complimenting a story of how the rest of his family spites him for his interests despite their shaky success, which even re-appropriated into a romantic backdrop fits so well into accepted blues topics. Again, a key change isn't a huge change from the norm even by Hole's standards, but it makes the ending so satisfying.
Other tracks have moments, but very big patchy points. Can't Stop Loving You, again, has some cool digressions but drags, as does the bright piano tinged dirge of Something Inside Of Me. And in a catalogue with numerous slow or acoustic numbers, some of which are great and some of which are bores, Yours For A Song is so close to sitting up there with the rest of them that it becomes all the more frustrating. A few poor lyrical choices betray the framing of a despondent story about constant isolation. I can feel a sentiment like "I am yours for a song, but for only for a song", but not so much how every woman he has met over the world has done him wrong. It also features some monotonous guitar and vocal work, and yet great conclusions from both.
Overall, the album feels very front-loaded. On the Australian release at least, all of the best songs are in the first half, and about half of the second side feels so half-baked that this almost comes across as a filler-laden studio effort rushed out the door. I don't know how blues musicians generally treat EPs as opposed to LPs, but I think Hole should have considered the option if the quality is so lop-sided. Throughout the first half, my prevailing feeling was that of pride, because I was impressed the man could diversify his sound just enough to remain interesting this long into his career, but the second half had me realising that we probably were in the twilight years of Hole's career. He goes back and forth on misunderstanding his own strengths, and throughout his whole discography, he can make even simple song frameworks sound interesting if he has just enough to work with and if he really knuckles down on the solos. The latter is only true in certain instances here, and the former is a too uncommon occurence.
Still, no song on here is bad as opposed to average. Hole's playing remains sharp beyond his age, and by this point, the production work had stabilised. With a steadfast rhythm section and a greater use of keys, the compositions feel fuller even when they're likely freeform jams. Even as far away from the "youthful" days of Short Fuse Blues, he sounds no more decrepit than he did fifteen years earlier, which is impressive in its own right. But none of these qualities really elevate Rough Diamond so much as they ensure its raw listenability, which makes it better than The Plumber and Working Overtime, but not by a whole lot. This is where he started to sound more easygoing on the songwriting side, and there wasn't even that big of a break from his last release, especially not compared to the distance between this release and his next. Crib the great songs, leave the rest at the door. Rescue the diamonds in the rough.
