{"id":82291,"date":"2025-07-22T04:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T04:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/82291\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T04:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T04:48:09","slug":"jonathan-richman-only-frozen-sky-anyway-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/82291\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Richman: Only Frozen Sky Anyway Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Richman<\/a> has spent the better part of his five-plus-decade career as a sunny, reassuring presence on the fringes of American rock, rhapsodizing about the mundane rhythms of everyday life. He never came close to the Billboard charts but his cult was big enough to edge into the mainstream. When the Farrelly brothers needed a friendly face to defuse the raunchiness of 1998\u2019s There\u2019s Something About Mary, they asked Richman to serve as the comedy\u2019s Greek chorus; alone among alternative-minded singer-songwriters of the era, he radiated unabashed humor and unguarded emotion.<\/p>\n

Given Richman\u2019s customary gentleness, it\u2019s genuinely disconcerting hearing him sing about mortality. \u201cWhen I make my transition, I want everyone to know I only changed positions,\u201d he sings at the outset of Only Frozen Sky Anyway, his 18th studio album\u2014an acknowledgement that the 74-year-old singer-songwriter has accepted the inevitability (if not the finality) of his eventual passage from this particular astral plane.<\/p>\n

Though he doesn\u2019t dwell on the subject, death is the thread that ties together Only Frozen Sky Anyway. He admits as much in the record\u2019s brief liner notes, writing of the deceptively lively \u201cSe Va Pa\u2019volver\u201d that it represents a theme that took shape during the album\u2019s recording sessions this past January: \u201cThe song is about how our friends are leaving, in their dying, on an errand, only to return. In another role. With another mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Old friends were on Richman\u2019s mind when he headed into the studio alongside his longtime drummer Tommy Larkins and keyboardist Jerry Harrison, who played in Richman\u2019s original Modern Lovers<\/a> lineup before departing to join Talking Heads<\/a>. In his notes, the Richman salutes Andy Paley, a power-pop legend who ran in the same Boston circles as the Modern Lovers and died last November; early in the 1970s, he and Harrison played together in the Sidewinders, and he later produced Richman\u2019s 1996 album Surrender to Jonathan!<\/p>\n

Paley\u2019s passing adds resonance to Harrison\u2019s reunion with Richman, lending the impression that the two old colleagues are seizing the opportunity to make music while they still can. The keyboardist returned to the fold nearly a decade ago but he\u2019s a major presence on Only Frozen Sky Anyway, seamlessly joining a collective that\u2019s augmented by a handful of auxiliary musicians including Nicole Montalbano, Richman\u2019s wife, who serves as a co-producer and occasional tamboura player.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an intimate group, one responsive to Richman\u2019s proclivities and quirks. He may be pondering the great transitions, but that doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s abandoned the music he\u2019s held dear for years. As he puts it on \u201cThe Wavelet,\u201d a meditative drone that closes the album: \u201cI don\u2019t want to go to sleep now, I want to dance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jonathan Richman has spent the better part of his five-plus-decade career as a sunny, reassuring presence on the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":82292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1939,171,975,67,132,68,1940],"class_list":{"0":"post-82291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114895081398088724","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}