Joe Jackson
POP
Harmony For People Out of Tune With Life

By JON PARELES
April 16, 2003
The New York Times

If Joe Jackson had been born a few decades earlier, he would have been writing show tunes. He's constantly imagining characters and situations, letting narrators tell their stories on the way to an ardent chorus while slipping musical games behind the melodies. Luckily, Mr. Jackson grew up in the punk-rock era, and with the new-wave band he formed 25 years ago he cut away pop sentimentality and revved up the beat. He made three albums with that band from 1978 to 1980, and he has reunited with them to make the new ''Volume 4'' (Restless/Rykodisc) and to tour.

They played three sold-out New York City shows over the weekend, ending up Sunday night at the Bowery Ballroom. They are as nervy and tightly wound as ever. Elvis Costello, Mr. Jackson's contemporary, was revitalized by rejoining his old bandmen, and so is Mr. Jackson. ''No one ever thought that we'd reform,'' Mr. Jackson exulted. ''Somebody said that -- I think it was me.''

The gap between the band's old and new songs was narrow. Mr. Jackson has always sung about also-rans and second-raters like the unwanted suitor in ''Is She Really Going Out With Him?'' or the harried worker in ''Got the Time,'' and he's still observing frustrated characters like the grown-up who never outgrew his ''Awkward Age'' or the separating couple in ''Bright Grey.''

The band still applies a ruthless economy to the arrangements, but it revels in variety. It floated Gary Sanford's guitar chords against Dave Houghton's quietly ticking drums in ''Chrome'' and had Graham Maby on bass set a reggae riff against Mr. Jackson's quasi-Baroque piano in ''Take It Like a Man.'' Mr. Jackson is still calling for musical twists like the wah-wah funk of ''Fairy Dust,'' which is in 5/4 time.

Since 1980 Mr. Jackson's songs have grown slightly less cynical and far more sympathetic to women. And at a time when new- wave rock is being rediscovered by young bands, Mr. Jackson and the band aren't shy about deliberately recreating styles like the glam-rock of ''Little Bit Stupid.''

But their best revival is the unbridled attack of the band: the pithy and exact arrangements that still make room for Gary Sanford's tremolo frenzies in ''Got the Time'' or a deliberately dissonant line after Mr. Jackson sings ''play guitar'' in ''Sunday Papers.'' Mr. Jackson's many projects since 1980 -- his keyboard-centered hit album ''Night and Day'' in 1982, his extended compositions -- had the sophistication but not the bite of his first band. Like his fans, he seems to have missed it, too.