Steve Winwood - Arc Of A Diver (1980)

I like Steve Winwood, at least the Steve Winwood from Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith. I only know of one definite Steve Winwood song from the 1980s, "Back In The High Life," and that has me concerned. I previously liked Paul Simon from the 70s, then I heard Paul Simon from the 80s. If Steve Winwood had a similar evolution Arc Of A Diver could be a tough listen, though hopefully a short one.

Uggh... had to pause after 7 seconds of track 1. All I know so far about "While You See A Chance" is it opens with a slow synthesized string fade-in, eventually joined by synthesized trumpets. It's just about the cheesiest most horribly dated thing I've ever heard. I use the phrase "delightfully dated" a lot, usually in reference to funk music from the 70s. Was there anything in the 80s that wound up being delightfully dated, or is it all just dated? The worst thing about this synth intro is if it were recorded in 1960 instead of 1980 it probably would have been done using a Hammond organ and would have sounded beautiful. As it turns out later in the track there is a Hammond organ in the background buried under all the 80s synths, so it's not like Mr. Winwood didn't have one on hand.

How could any artist who recorded in the 60s and 70s hear the synthesizers from the late 70s/early 80s and think to themselves, "Man, these sound great! I'm gonna use them in place of real instruments on an entire album!" Was it all about laziness? It is much simpler to have one guy on keys pushing the button for the trumpet or sax sound and then just playing piano, rather than hiring several different session musicians and trying to record and produce them.

So I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently the album is noteworthy partly because Steve Winwood played all the instruments on the album himself. I guess I feel kinda bad for suggesting laziness played any part on using synths, but it doesn't really change how I feel. It sounds like crap to hear synths in place of genuine brass and organ parts. Still Winwood's efforts as a multi-instrumentalist are impressive, and his ability to produce the album and make it sound like a tight live band is pretty cool. Props for that, especially since I recently listened to an album where it sounded like every instrument was played solo on another planet.

After the first couple tracks I was ready to give this 1 star, even though I like Steve Winwood's voice. I just hated the synths that much. But the second half of the album is less offensive I guess, because in the end I've decided it's good enough for 2 stars. That doesn't mean it's particularly good, just kinda meh, like most of the good music from the 80s.