Discovering non-canonical yacht rock songs is one of the true and distinct pleasures of searching for music. While it's always interesting to re-discover the familiar songs of the
Doobie Brothers,
Steely Dan, and the rest of the giants of the 70's soft rock pantheon, it's a far rarer and more delightful treat to come across a song that, given my age, has passed me by or never even got the chance to. The titular track from
Art Garfunkel's second solo album,
Break Away is just such a song. Penned by
Gallagher & Lyle, the Scottish songwriting duo who also wrote
A Heart in New York, which
Simon & Garfunkel sang at their concert in Central Park. (Garfunkel's version sounds like
Chicago, incidentally.)
Art Garfunkel's voice doesn't crack here or warble, an affectation that served him well in his songs with
Paul Simon, but marred some of his solo work. I'm thinking specifically of the verses in
I Believe (When I Fall in Love it Will be Forever), which is far too insistent a song to fall under the rubric of yacht rock. More a raft caught in a squall, than the pleasurecrafting of
Break Away.
Guests on Garfunkel's "Break Away" album include Paul Simon, Toni Tennille of
Captain & Tennille, Graham Nash & David Crosby, & Beatles-friend & former Manfred Mann member
Klaus Voorman.
What are the qualities of a yacht rock song, good or bad? Obviously, from the great television show of the same name, we can find out that it's the smoothness of the sound and generally written and performed by a group of associated musicians in Southern California during the 70's, but this song doesn't fit that description and yet it's definitely yacht rock. The jazz-inflection, the presence of a Rhodes piano, vocal harmonies, an easy and gentle tempo: these are a few of the obvious signifiers.
Does
The Black Ghosts It's Your Touch count as a contemporary yacht-rock song? I'd generally say not, though it's certainly smoother. Closer to
Sade and Zima commercials, though. The Black Ghosts is a bizarre Hammer Horror British Noirist recording project from Simon Lord of
Simian Mobile Disco and Theo Keaitng of
The Wiseguy. I don't know how I feel about this song, really. I liked the sound and the production (it certainly reminds me of
Phoenix) but the vocals lag and commit the familiar British crime of the Pitch Shift Whine that annoys me about
Muse,
Radiohead, and
Elbow, to cite a few of the major offenders.
