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Warren Zevon
The Envoy
(Asylum/Rhino)
First Appeared in The Music Box, July 2007, Volume 14, #7
Written by John Metzger
Warren Zevon put everything that he had into the making of his fifth studio
effort The Envoy. While his songs consistently had been strong, his
sobriety meant that he was able to push his craftsmanship forward in new
directions. On his preceding studio endeavor Bad Luck Streak in Dancing
School, he had begun to pull back the veil in which he had at least
partially enshrouded himself. Although there were a few shady characters and
exotic locales dotting The Envoy’s landscape, there also was little doubt
that Zevon knew them intimately. On Charlie’s Medicine, he relayed, from
the perspective of a junkie, the rather chilling and haunting tale of a dealer
who was shot dead by a doctor — "Charlie didn’t feel a thing/Neither of them
did," he sang — while the doomed relationship of The Hula Hula Boys was
countered by the nearly romantic optimism that crept through the defiance of Let Nothing Come Between You. Saving his most poignant and personal song for
last, Zevon told himself on Never Too Late for Love, "You could try to
let the past slip away/Live for today/Don’t stop believing in tomorrow." The
hymn-like quality of the arrangement that he had employed certainly wasn’t an
accident, and it had the effect of transforming the piece into a quiet,
heartfelt benediction.
In a similar fashion, Zevon was far more invested in the recording process
than he had been previously, and The Envoy, which had been in the works
for more than a year, boasted a stylistic breadth that was unlike anything he
had ever concocted. Although nothing on the set truly mirrored the manic
aggression of his concert persona — which had been documented so potently on Stand in the Fire — there undeniably was a greater intensity to his
delivery, which, at times, paid homage to Lou Reed. Edgy rockers like The
Overdraft, Ain’t That Pretty at All, and the title track gave him an
opportunity to vent and fume as he captured the angst of obsessive (and illegal)
love on the run, self-destruction, and the state of global politics,
respectively. Elsewhere, the perky pop structure of Looking for the Next Best
Thing did little to hide the playful sneer in his voice as he walked a line
between chiding those who would settle for less and learning to accept the
things that are outside his control. On Jesus Mentioned, he employed a
simple voice- and guitar-based framework to outline a remembrance of Elvis that
intertwined spirituality and addiction.
Still, for all the changes that he confidently brought to bear on the set,
The Envoy never succeeded fully in overcoming the sense that it was a
transitional effort, one on which Zevon was discovering who he was by developing
a new process for working that didn’t rely upon substance abuse for answers.
Unfortunately, when the album failed to achieve the same level of commercial
success as its predecessors, Asylum terminated his contract, and Zevon fell back
into old routines by embarking upon a life-threatening binge of hedonistic
inebriation. In spite of a few minor artifacts from the ’80s lurking within the
dressing to its songs, The Envoy continues to hold up quite well, nearly
25 years after its initial release. Had it reached its intended audience, it
likely would have been the start of something better for Zevon, a notion to
which several of its bonus tracks — the personal challenge outlined in The
Risk and a deliriously unsettled romp through Chip Taylor’s Wild Thing — seem to allude.  ½
The Envoy is available from Amazon.com.
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
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