After his commercial breakthrough providing the music for the hit TV series "3rd Rock From The Sun", singer-songwriter Ben Vaughn put his solo career on the back burner. Since the success of "Sun," he has written and performed the music for a dozen TV shows and films, as well as serving as a musical producer for "That 70s Show".
Glasgow Time, his first full-length album since 1997's Rambler '65 (which was recorded in his car), is a welcome return for Vaughn, whose humorous, occasionally skewed songs about love and modern life have been recorded by the Morells, Lonesome Bob (his former drummer) and Marshall Crenshaw.
Recorded in 1999 and 2000 in Scotland, Glasgow Time is divided into folk/country and pop/rock segments. Vaughn employed a backing band of Scottish musicians, including members of Teenage Fanclub and Belle & Sebastian. After working as a one-man band for much of the 1990s, Vaughn sounds more at home as part of an ensemble, and the album has echoes of his Ben Vaughn Combo work during the 1980s.
"Still Alive", the opening track, echoes Vaughn's soundtrack work and sounds like a tribute to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone with its use of fiddle and accordion. "Time Will Catch Us", written with Dave Alvin, is a ballad about infidelity previously recorded by Boston soul singer Barrence Whitfield. Vaughn slows the tempo to bring the singer's ambivalent regrets to the forefront. "When Losers Rule The World", co-written with Rodney Crowell, is a good display of Vaughn's rueful humor.
Vaughn also reworks two of his songs from the 1980s, "You're Gonna Hurt Yourself" and "Darlene". The former, a highlight from 1985's The Many Moods Of Ben Vaughn, and the latter, from 1988's Ben Vaughn Blows Your Mind, are no less effective the second time around. If TV shows can offer reruns, why not recording artists?
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