Jonathan Richman: Jonathan Sings : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On his newest record, Jonathan Richman sounds more childlike than childish. There's a big distinction, as anyone familiar with his other records could tell you. It's the difference between engaging the listener with a sense of wonder and making you feel as if you're baby-sitting for an overeager kid. Jonathan Sings! displays a greater maturity and attentiveness to songcraft than all but Richman's very first album, with no apparent diminution of his elfin lust for life.

An anomaly in the bullish world of rock, Jonathan sings, in his funny, fragile way, of the longings of the heart for the innocence and insouciance of youth, soliloquizing on such pulse-quickening subjects as fast cars (too fast for his liking), first loves, conga drums and dancing in the street. A shameless romantic, he even rhapsodizes on the Paris of Piaf and Aznavour. Not that he's forever playing ostrich with life's darker side: "The Neighbors" is an odd little intrigue about a case of mistaken infidelity, with the see-if-I-care refrain, "I don't need to let the neighbors run my life."

But there's nothing truly scandalous going on in Master Jonathan's neighborhood. More typical is "That Summer Feeling," a classic ode to childhood revisited that evokes, in deliciously tactile images, the casual splendor and unsullied freedom of youth. The newest bunch of Modern Lovers manage a perky, Fifties-style small-combo sound that allows Richman's charmingly a melodic voice to wander about whimsically. Welcome back, Jonathan.