Written by: Dave Cantrell

Well heck. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. In the two-year interim since the Kevin Ayers-inspired Kaye, which your faithful scribe said had “an uncommonly deft ability to wrap the whimsy of imagination around the complicated mess of human experience,” anticipation for the follow-up couldn’t help but run high. That album bounce around the varietal gamut, individual tracks inviting such hybridized descriptors as ‘urban funky,’ ‘chamber poppy,’ and ‘psych-folky’ while the whole of it held together with mosaic’d prowess. This man Edward Rogers can write a tun, often embroiling the heart in that very same existential weft alluded to above as if he’s discovered some secret aural corridor that directly connects the ear to that ventricled marvel pumping within. Which is why it’s all the more disappointing (to the point of perplexity) to report that the arrival of Glass Marbles betokens, for the most part, not so much quiet moments of savor as sighs of befuddlement, the hope for more dashing songcraft turning into dashed expectations.

Now, before you say anything, I get that expectations are problematic to begin with but with Rogers’ same crack band in place (Syd Straw’s Don Piper, James Mastro from the Bongos, Sparks’ Sal Maida and Smithereen Dennis Diken) and again joined by some heavy-hitting guests (Dave Schramm, Joe McGinty, Konrad Meissner among others), it wasn’t unreasonable to carry those expectations forward. And indeed in places on Glass Marbles that transferred faith is justified. “Denmark Street Forgotten,” supple and chimingly melancholy, is powerful – and universal – in its invocations of aching remembrance, “Looking For Stone Angels” is still as capable of triggering Byrdsian pop shivers as it was when SEM featured it a couple months back, opener The World of Mystery does a nice rousing Mott-in-Dylan-mode turn while the closing title track grabs immediate attention via a sort of shattering folk-rock funk, really ripping the cover off the ball as it shreds through themes of class and simmering inequality with a relentless vigor. There are other bright spots on this 18-track album – “The Letter” is an effecting, echo-laden singer-songwriter lament that would have fit nicely on Kaye – but too often the feel is perfunctory, the playing and arrangements immaculate but slight, the lyrics flirting with the trite (a fact reflected in the titles: “Welcome To My Monday Morning,” “Jumbo Sale,” Broken Wishes on Display,” “I’m Your Everyday Man”). There are glimmers in all of these but they ten to get overshadowed by the dull shine of the predictable. Songs of this sort, reliant on time-held structures on which are hung the artist’s open-hearted and/or ironic observations on life and romance, require boosts, some measure of fuel-injection firing on a fair share of emotional torque. Here the settings as often as not seem set on enervated auto-pilot and again I don’t get it.

Edward Rogers has a particularly compelling backstory (click on that link up there for the basics) that has in most instances stood the man in good stead, imbuing his material with an understated but essential survivor’s brio. On Glass Marbles, it would seem that innate guiding force has left him half-abandoned. For now though I’ll hold my faith and lay future money on Rogers’ next effort restoring the balance. There’s no doubt the guy’s got it in him (as witness the clip below).