- The complete John Mellencamp Discography (through 2007) guide is HERE
- My live review of his 11/27 Chicago show is HERE
- No Better Than This album review HERE
Since last week I've had a lot of traffic on the discography guide, most likely due to the Whenever We Wanted cover. I can only hope that people took a few minutes to read my review of the album. While it's not by any means his best album, it's a damn fine record where he reintroduced the world to the electric guitar. It may not be a definitive record, but it's an important record for him at that moment in time and it houses possibly one of hiss five greatest songs ever, "Now More Than Ever", a song that resonates stronger and stronger with each passing year. Here's what I wrote in the Album Guide from a few years back:
Two weeks after Nirvana's Nevermind landed in record stores and three weeks after Guns N' Roses double-disc opus Use Your Illusion debuted, John Mellencamp was reborn. October 8, 1991 saw the release of Whenever We Wanted, the first album to be released under the last name he would ever use; John Mellencamp. Whenever We Wanted found Mellencamp striving forward and all but abandoning the accordion, fiddle and heartland music he had perfected over his last three albums. Whenever We Wanted showcases the thunderous return of the electric guitar. Not only is it a fine return to form, but he has turned up the volume producing his heaviest record to date. Right from the get go, the storming politically conscious "Love and Happiness" sets the course with thick crunching riffs that would not relent until the disc had spun all ten tunes. While the album is arguably his least adventurous since American Fool, that is not necessarily bad. Mellencamp took the pastoral sounds as far as he could go with Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and Big Daddy. Here the music is stripped to the bare minimum (or at least I thought it was until the release of Dance Naked). While Lisa Germano's violin is absent from the entire recording, guitarists Mike Wanchic and David Grissom lead the attack with their dueling guitars while drummer Kenny Aronoff and bassist Toby Myers keep the beat as John Cascella fills in colors with his Hammond B-3 organ to the guitar heavy record. The tour in support of the album is viewed by most Mellencamp fans as his defining moment as a live performer.
The album has more in common with American Fool than The Lonesome Jubilee, yet lyrically he was expanding his themes to world views (which he would continue to do with his next few albums) on songs like the epic “Now More Than Ever” (a deserving anthem he should perform regularly), “Last Chance” and “Love and Happiness”. Deep cuts like “Melting Pot” are uneven musically but winds up being a whimsical alternate route while the dreamy and atmospheric “Last Chance” is an homage of sorts to Chris Isaak and Roy Orbison. However, at the end of the day, the delight of the perfect pop tune could still be heard on amorous “Again Tonight” and the jolting “Get A Leg Up” showing that when you least expect it, one can still plug in the guitar and find their way home.
