Steve Miller Band: The Joker : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Steve Miller is responsible for three of the best and one of the worst albums I own. Miller's recent Recall the Beginning, a Journey to Eden, was a confessional work so full of self-awareness I wondered whether he was about to regain the imaginativeness he'd shed over the course of his three preceding albums. Unfortunately, the new LP, The Joker, is a lazy slide back into the empty posturing that has marked the second half of Miller's career.

While not as embarrassing as Rock Love, it is disturbing because of his strained references to the personas (like the space cowboy and the gangster of love) that dotted his early music. The title song (which may ironically turn out to be his biggest single) is little more than a series of references to his past, coupled with catchy vocal harmonies and bass line.

With the exception of the Boz Scaggs-flavored "Sugar Babe," side one consists of Miller's compulsive pseudo-R&B jiving, which used to work in small doses as comic relief, but which palls as the main dish.

The last quarter of the album redeems it somewhat. That section consists of three credible and well-performed songs: the workhorse country blues, "Come On in My Kitchen," and two originals, "Evil" and "Something to Believe In." Although the first two are live performances, Miller's voice is perfectly controlled and clear. "Something to Believe In" is marked by a guitar intro lifted intact from the Association's "Never My Love," the ethereal pedal steel of Sneeky Pete, and some of Miller's best singing.

It has the intimacy and credibility so lacking in the rest of the album. As the title and cover art suggest, Miller is attempting here to disguise rather than to reveal.