New York’s WILLIE NILE is one of those artists in a classically difficult position. He basically makes mainstream rock & roll records, full of easy hooks, big choruses, friendly production values, etc. Yet somehow, in the near-30 years Nile has knocked around the music industry, somehow he’s never hit the big – or even the medium – time. (Though he did tour with THE WHO in 1980.) On the basis of his latest record House of a Thousand Guitars, I’m baffled as to why.
OK, this kind of music is hardly a ticket to radio or chart success anymore, unless your name is BRUCE or PETTY. But from the beginning Nile has had little more than a small cult following, at least in his own country, and if he’s always made albums as good as this one, his low profile is a complete mystery. His marriage of widescreen rock & roll to Dylanesque verbiage is at least as potent as his neighbor Springsteen’s – I’d argue more so, since Nile avoids the Boss’s penchant for excess. His thin, scratchy voice might be an impediment, but it hasn’t held back STEVE FORBERT from at least achieving a hit single in the 70s and triple-A radio stardom since. I’m truly puzzled as to why catchy songs like “Magdalena,” “Doomsday Dance” and the rousing title anthem aren’t all over the radio, or why the ballads “Touch Me” and “When the Last Light Goes Out on Broadway” aren’t on their way to standardhood in the coffeehouse repertoire. “Little Light” is that perfect concert closer, a lighter-waving, faith-keeping au revoir that should require mousetraps around it, but doesn’t because it’s just too damn irresistible.
Nile is at the top of his game right now, as good as he’s ever been, yet his rightful place in the public consciousness is crowded with unimaginative hacks like JOHN MAYER. If you have any attraction at all to populist rock & roll, but find Springsteen too bombastic and Petty too facile, Willie Nile is your man and House of a Thousand Guitars your gift.
