Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
A perceived Fool can be the wisest person to talk, nobody ever pays too much attention to them until that nugget of reason which catches the ear is proclaimed as profound, but then dismissed as a one in a life time inspiration, never realising that the ready wit is always there, ready to be spoken, it is just that the fool prefers to only speak when he knows when everybody else is being duped by higher powers and they have become blind to the charms of conmen.
A Fool is not a label to ever place before Joe Jackson, rightly highly regarded as a lyric writer, a poet with a modern eye and able to twist the song’s meaning so you end up misleading yourself, you question the information and seek further advice, it is in this effect that the madness of King Lear’s Fool is shown to be the wisest person at court.
To play the fool is a gift that resonates within the heart of the poet and the artist, the fool sees the world through eyes that blaze and rings out truth, the legitimacy of observation and painted with a sincere brush and vivid colours, it is the honour of being able to construct a picture that the fool sets out that leaves the listener wondering how they did not see the joke being played upon them by those with no interest in their happiness or their wellbeing.
Joe Jackson’s prolific nature may have escaped the general public’s view, raised on the current trend of the fabulous, the wealthy and the in your face narcissism that has beguiled the airwaves over the last 20 years, he is not alone in that fact as far too many artists have suffered from the neglect of the media, it is just astonishing that somebody with the natural verve of song-writing can be left out of the public eye.
In Fool, Joe Jackson rises to the occasion once again and pulls the rug from underneath the establishment’s feet, the fool wins through because they are able to deceive the right people and make the underdog stand proud, and in songs such as Fabulously Absolute, the Small Faces-like craft in Dave, the album’s title song Fool and 32 Kisses, Joe Jackson scores a direct hit with an open eye, a steady calm on the trigger and the ability to mislead those who see life as a distraction from the pursuit of power.
It is an incredible feat of musical engineering, of poetic license to which Joe Jackson is triumphant and the stories laid out, cunning and beautiful, a fool, never, a genius always.
Ian D. Hall