Came home yesterday and saw this record sticking out of my shelf. Bright, yellow sleeve, that's what did it. I took it out and played it and was pleasantly impressed. Not really an album that I even knew I had. I have no idea either where or when I bought it. On one of my trips to The States I suspect, (ten years or more back), as it has the tough card sleeve that's so distinctively American. I don't think I've played it once since.
But I have now and it's a good record. Brave New World, The Steve Miller Band's third, released just after Bozz Scaggs left. It's got certain features of the late sixties, San Francisco scene that the band emerged from. Bluesy, funky, Rock and Roll feel, walloped drums, good time music. But it's also got more consistent, commercial nous that many of the hipper more elitist of those bands, consistently optimistic and positive and not overtly political or interested in the drugs culture. Not particularly concerned with anything really, except maintaining a happy state and churning out poppy good time tunes. Every track works. I imagine it's very few people's favourite albums. It's not ambitious enough for that. But it's consistently good company, like a friend you get round to going out for a drink with every eight months or so.
There's a clear influence of the psychedelic Beatles on here in parts in the arrangements and the drumming, particularly the first two songs here. McCartney featured on the final track My Dark Hour under the pseudonym Paul Ramon and Lady Madonna's, Fats Domino melody features shamelessly on Space Cowboy I imagine with Beatles' permission. It seems clear why he would have been keen to take part. Miller had something of his own, light, commercial touch.
Otherwise it's pure West Coast. Nothing is overdone or heavy and it's not difficult to see why the band did so well in the seventies and adapted their sound so successfully to the demands of AOR radio where they're best known for The Joker and later still, Abracadabra. I'd take this record over those.
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