Review Summary: Marrying literate, punchy, darkly humourous stories with some of the best rock grooves of the day, Excitable Boy is as enchanting now as fourty years ago.
A lot of Zevon retrospectives will begin on some variation of the phrase "yes, Werewolves Of London is a great song, but did you know he has a whole career outside of that, whose exposure was only marred by its lack of mainstream exposure and certainly not of lack of quality?". But let's face it, some idioms are only so tired because they're so true. It's actually important to note the strength of his songwriting across the board, because the connections he made as a result were both impressive on their own and, arguably, as much of a factor into the success that he did have.
It's important to note that his talents did get noticed by others in the industry itself, despite his ultimate inability to escape one hit wonder status, because that should put into perspective how amazing it is that he was able to wrangle in half of Fleetwood Mac to perform on the big single the same year a little album called Rumors came out. Clearly, there must have been something enchanting about Zevon's talents if he could attract them at a period where they could have retired instantly. And indeed, coming back to Excitable Boy some fourty years later, it's easy to see how the singer-songwriter stood out in the day, and that his album holds up just fine.
What makes the album gripping is that, much like the man himself, it treads the line between pleasurable contemporary trends, manic self-indulgence and macabre imagery delivered with a snide drawl. Dark humour was the name of Zevon's game, and the big single is a pretty good index of his sound, even if he would later deride it as a "joke song" written to get a dance hit out the door. An unmatchable rhythm backed up by a piano riff which we all know by heart by this point sees a fusion of old and new, classy and tacky, as Zevon rambles a stream of consciousness story about horror monsters mingling with modern day icons, with a hint of Victorian flair clashing obviously with the rock and roll excess dressing everything up. There's a very 'in the moment' instant energy to the story even though the delivery, both from the band and from Zevon himself, is coasty, riding one groove for the entire song. But it's the jubilance through which this wry, dark subject matter is presented that gives the song a unique edge, and though Zevon would be more serious to varying degrees on other songs and albums, this rambling dark humour is a motif that would come to define him.
Elsewhere, Zevon delivers more straightforward stories, such as Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner, a murder ballad not too far divorced from a classic outlaw country ghost story, where violent foreign politics and personal revenge fantasies collide. This is much more directly underlined on Veracruz, a song directly invoking Woodrow Wilson's invasion of the country and describing loss of both human life and social pride as a result. Both of these tracks are delivered very starkly, with Roland's tale sung with a lot of range and power for a man generally known only to sit behind a piano. Zevon was unafraid to showcase his versatility, but was also careful to remain grounded and maintain as much willingness to throw himself in the dirt alongside whatever subject matter he would sing about.
Case in point, the title track. A bouncy backing track with lots of little leads, a strong saxophone, a female doo-wop backing section and a single line chorus present a fun sonic backdrop against a story that starts out innocent and goes awry, where the singing acknowledges the ugliness of the titular character's heinous acts but the music remains gleeful, to deliciously dissonant and satisfying results. A somewhat inverse result is achieved on Tenderness On The Block, which seems to go from cynicism to optimism with the instrumentation being as weaving throughout but without any explicit changes, mirroring the uncertain but generally flattering mood lyric-wise.
Zevon can go from literate to metaphorical to bluntly macabre to sardonic without ever making a farce of the situation presented; even Werewolves has an element of danger to it. The song that best showcases his flexibility without having to write more than what is needed is the final track, Lawyers Guns and Money. Combining his penchant for critiquing foreign politics, playing into stereotypes of the upper class and doing it all with a wink and a smile without buckling under the danger of the situation. You really believe this kid is tangibly scared for his life, but you're as likely to laugh at him for getting himself involved.
While Zevon's witty lyricism is definitely the star of the show, the music itself is nothing to scoff at. While his melodic touches and deft songwriting would stay as strong throughout, no album of his purely sounds as great as Excitable Boy, many songs embracing the gritty tone of the lyrics with an enhanced rock edge. The many big name guest musicians all help to emphasise how tight the performances are, but none of it would get there without Zevon's superb melodic touches along the way, such as the ever tense Veracruz, which rarely properly resolves, the smooth Steinman-like Accidentally Like A Martyr, or the smarmy groove of Nighttime In The Switching Yard, perhaps the only song whose lyrics aren't a focus, but it doesn't matter because the disco rock on offer is as sharp as anything the Doobie Brothers were doing at that point.
The album is generally sharp and groovy when it's not steeped in piano balladry, and while a lot of song structures are playful with where they place the hooks, they all have an X-factor that makes them instantly attractive, and that was a key part of Zevon's charm. It's likely why, even though his time in the limelight was much shorter, he was arguably able to achieve more mainstream success than other literate, dark humour focused singer-songwriters like Tom Waits and Nick Cave. It's that meeting between pop sensibilities, rock energy, art indulgence and development and an almost post-punk penchant for sardonic but socially aware songwriting. One of Zevon's best friends throughout life was gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and you can see how their personalities would overlap from this album alone.
Which is just another quality of Excitable Boy: how vivid it is despite the rock and roll excess and stuffy cultural references it's loaded with. Zevon was fairly young when he made this, but he always wrote like a man who had lived a life up to that point, and if he's not writing in a stream of consciousness style a la Werewolves, there's usually a romanticism to the events in hindsight, even on the dour break-up ballad Accidentally Like A Martyr, so dramatic and yet so real. The only song that kind of falters in this regard is Johnny Strikes Up The Band. Still great production-wise, it doesn't hit as hard as any other song, carrying neither mainstream single qualities nor dense or dirty lyrical work. It was clearly made more to set the mood for the rest of the album.
To be honest, if you don't have a lot of patience for “classic rock” that dominated 70s radio, it's doubtful Excitable Boy will change your mind. But this is definitely among the better records of that time, great instrumental performances with tight grooves and a balance of improv vs. polish that's just right elevating one of the most daring lyrical minds of the time. Even though it's full of timely references, both the subject matters and the delivery make the stories, and thus the songs, timeless.
