For a
Beatle,
Ringo Starr has had a relatively quiet latter-day solo career. After salvaging his tattered reputation in 1992 with Time Takes Time -- his first album in nearly a decade and his first in nearly 20 years to serve his legend well --
Starr settled into touring regularly with his ever-changing
All-Starr Band, documenting almost every tour with a live album, then turning out a new studio album every three or four years. After Time Takes Time, all these albums were recorded in collaboration with
Mark Hudson, best known as one of '70s popsters the Hudson Brothers but also an L.A. session man who slowly became
Ringo's right-hand man.
Starr's albums with
Hudson never grabbed much attention outside the
Beatles hardcore -- unlike Time Takes Time, they were rarely studded with stars and once he decamped from the majors to the indie Koch in 2003, they never received much of a marketing push, either, so they played solely to the devoted, who were always satisfied by the happily
Beatlesque music
Starr made with
Hudson. This collaboration continued into 2007 as the duo embarked on what would become the
Liverpool 8 album, but they had a falling out in the final stages of recording, with former
Eurythmic David A. Stewart brought in at the last minute to polish up the album and collaborate on its title song.
Stewart helps give
Liverpool 8 the gloss the album needs as it's not only
Ringo's first major-label album in five years, it's his homecoming to Capitol Records, the label that released the
Beatles albums and
Starr's first, best solo albums (highlights from which dominated the 2007 hits comp Photograph, released a matter of months before
Liverpool 8).
On the surface,
Liverpool 8 does indeed feel a bit like a comeback:
Stewart's "re-production" -- so named in the liner notes as he gussied up
Hudson's original production -- turns the music shiny and sleek and there are several cheerful forays into baby boomer nostalgia, whether it's the outright reference to "It Don't Come Easy" on "Gone Are the Days" or
Ringo's stroll through his back pages on "Liverpool 8," reminiscent of
Paul McCartney's marveling at his past on "That Was Me," a rollicking number on his 2007 album
Memory Almost Full. At times,
Liverpool 8 recalls
Memory in how it balances nostalgia and mortality -- on "R U Ready"
Ringo jovially stares into the great beyond -- which is just enough of a hook to reel in boomers who haven't listened to
Ringo in years. Nevertheless, this sentimentality, like the
Stewart reproduction, is just window dressing on an album that is essentially not all that different than the three that preceded it.
Liverpool 8 is a relaxed, amiable collection of friendly pop tunes: it's nothing too flashy and it has no one tune that calls attention to itself, but it's a well-constructed, casually charming pop record. In a way, the smaller-scale productions of the Koch records served latter-day
Ringo better, as they were as humble and unpretentious as his music, but even if
Liverpool 8 is a little bit too pumped up and slick for its own good,
Starr remains eminently likable, which is enough for those who have enjoyed
Ringorama or
Choose Love. However, it may not be enough for those hoping for another
Ringo or
Goodnight Vienna, which is what the big marketing push, complete with the album's release as a USB bracelet, suggests it is.
Liverpool 8 is not another
Memory Almost Full, an album that offers enough reminders of the past but is about the present; it is merely another good latter-day record for
Ringo, filled with songs about love and spiked with a ridiculous novelty number (this time, it's "Pasodobles," where
Starr warbles about a Spanish dance). For those who already love
Ringo, that's plenty good enough, but for those who often (and often unfairly) run the good man down, this is too light, easygoing, and sometimes unapologetically silly to change their minds. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine