Everyone thinks of Jimmy Stewart as a sanitized "oh gosh" icon of apple-pie Americana, but when you look at his body of work, there are a lot of disturbed characters in there. The voyeur and the sexually obsessive freak he played for Hitchcock are obvious examples, but even his George Bailey in that allegedly saccharine but actually coal-dark holiday classic It's a Wonderful life is scary and intense for most of the film.
Billy Joel may be the Jimmy Stewart of pop. He's the piano man who sings songs your Jagger-phobic mom thought were nice, but if you look closer at his body of work, there are a lot of disturbed characters in there, none of whom are ever more disturbed than the singer. Who's creepier: the pot-smoking, nose-picking, masturbating subject of "Captain Jack" or the curtain-twitching voyeur who sits in snide judgment of that kid's every move? Joel also does the Rear Window bit in other sneeringly judgmental tracks like "Movin' Out", "Big Shot", "Los Angelenos", and "Angry Young Man", on which he seems to be addressing a mirror. So the guy may have often sounded like McCartney on a particularly sunny Sunday, but a lot of Joel's work could go toe-to-toe with Elvis Costello's in terms of bitterness.
Billy Joel shed his engaging bitter streak by the time he "matured" with 1983's blockbuster Innocent Man, giving in to utter blandness once and for all, but the albums leading up to it all have enough tartness to balance out any sappy or superficial tendencies. These records are spotty but they also include some of the best mainstream pop songs of the late seventies, such as the McCartney-esque "My Life", the riffy "Los Angelenos", the rippling "Everybody Loves You Know", the fabulous Ronettes homage "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (my personal favorite of his songs), the breathless piano tour de force "Prelude/Angry Young Man", and the deliciously cheeky jazz-pop "Zanzibar".
These early records are the ones that Sony Legacy is now reissuing à la carte after collecting them in The Vinyl Collection Vol. 1 box set three years ago. They include four of his first six studio albums--Cold Spring Harbor, Streetlife Serenade, Turnstiles, and 52nd Street (Piano Man and The Stranger were reissued in 2022)-- as well as the 1981 live compilation Songs in the Attic and a 1975 set at the Great American Music Hall. The live albums fix one of the main problems with Joel's first four albums: his tendency to waste his expressive voice by singing in a Harry Chapin-esque monotone. Joel spared none of his range when performing "Captain Jack", "Everybody Loves You Now", "Los Angelenos", "The Entertainer", and the rest for audiences. His band follows suit with thunderous performances. His genuinely funny between-song banter on Live at the Great American Music Hall, 1975, makes that collection particularly enjoyable even though the song selection isn't as strong as that of Attic.
No information on the records indicate that they've been remastered for this release. Played against my originals, they are not as punchy nor is the soundstage as deep. On their own terms, the reissues sound good with a fine dynamic range. Streetlife Serenade sounds particularly good. The sound is not overly flat or blatantly digital even though the lack of any trumpeting about analog mastering on the packaging is a pretty clear sign that they were digital. The vinyl is flat, well centered, and quiet, and the inners recreate the printed inners of the original releases and Songs in the Attic includes a repro of its liner notes insert.
