On Tuesday Eagle Records released Come A Little Bit Closer: The Best of Willy DeVille Live. The 17-track CD features material compiled from concerts in Amsterdam in 1977 and 2005, interspersed with other tracks from the Eighties, Nineties and into the new millennium from tour stops in the Netherlands, Montreux and Berlin.
"Venus of Avenue D" immediately introduces the listener to some of the hallmarks of DeVille's writing, with the big dynamic shifts that often characterized his dramatic live shows. "This Must Be the Night" is a perfect marriage of melody and rock and roll that begs the question, did DeVille influence Bruce Springsteen or was it the other way around? It's ironic that two artists who seemed to have many elements in common had such disparate commercial fortunes, but then again, DeVille's outlandish personal style, not to mention his impossible-to-characterize range of songwriting, must have made him considerably more difficult to market than Springsteen's Everyman persona.
Other standout tracks include "Just to Walk That Little Girl Home," a perfect example of DeVille's penchant for marrying unusual percussion tracks to instrumentation like accordions and horns. The sheer range of his writing is apparent throughout. "Demasiado Corazon (Too Much Heart)" explores a Latin feel with saxophones, while "Just Your Friends" is underpinned by acoustic guitar and percussion before violins and harmonicas join in with another trademark dramatic dynamic shift.
"Hey Joe" is a very unusual mariachi arrangement of the Jimi Hendrix classic, while "Can't Do Without It" is a bluesy lament with female background vocals. "Storybook Love" is a restrained piano ballad that got DeVille and Mark Knopfler nominated for an Academy Award. The set closes with "Spanish Stroll," a rocker with slide guitar solos.
If you don't like Willy DeVille, this collection is unlikely to convince you otherwise. It is what it is: a series of snapshots from the career of one of the most uncompromising singer/songwriters ever to emerge in the rock idiom. DeVille's music and idiosyncratic persona were undoubtedly a little much for some fans.
But if you're a fan of Willy DeVille, the New York rock scene, or just diverse singer/songwriter material, you should find a lot to like about Come A Little Bit Closer. An audio CD can't capture what DeVille really brought to the stage, but it can sure remind us all why he was so well-regarded as one of the stronger writers and peformers of his era.
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