Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There was never any doubt that Leo Sayer was, and remains, a singer of great abundant style and taste; what is perhaps a new feeling for the 21st Century is just how cool he is actually he is, like a wonderful single malt that’s been left to perfect over Time, Leo Sayer suddenly feels as though he is an elder statesman of the pop world.
This is of course absurd, for Leo Sayer has always been cool, he has always been riding along a different rail for sure but that doesn’t mean that his generous output of work is any the less diminished just because later generations didn’t get the appeal that sent the man’s original fans’ pulses racing harder than an all expenses paid trip to New York on Concorde. With the advent of his first studio album in seven years, the perhaps aptly titled Restless Years, it’s worth remembering that for some, age doesn’t always carry gravitas and the sense of being part of something spectacular most of their lives and yet for Leo Sayer, gravitas and spectacular are surely neatly bound together and presented with a ceremonial bow that dazzles with the reflection of tranquil and ever youthful repose.
Restless Years is an album of quality and that’s all down to the character of the man in not allowing the pasture of Time to become a daunting prospect in which to fear, nor allowing that same carefully planned pasture to be seen as place to take up residence, there are after all, still many battles to be fought and won.
It is that sense of battle for a man to whom after over 40 years performing on the big stage that makes songs such as Competing With A DJ, the reflective How Did We Get So Old, the excellent The Wrong Man and the album closer Mister In Between such intensely marvellous songs to listen to and gage time as not perhaps an enemy waiting to storm the gates of age but one to whom the battle is taken to and with as much arsenal as able to carry; the battle is joined, Leo Sayer remains a cool artist but to one now that the 21st Century will also acknowledge.
Restless Years is an album of sincere warmth; some artists just never lose the capacity to entertain.
Ian D. Hall