Night and Day

Jackson, Joe

album cover

Jackson's High-Stepping City Tour

When this album appeared in the thick of New Wave frenzy in 1982, most pop people knew Joe Jackson as a scrawny Englishman with a bratty voice (see "Is She Really Going Out with Him?," his then-biggest hit) and a penchant for ersatz up-tempo swing.

It's safe to say that no one was prepared for the cinematic Night and Day—a cosmopolitan swirl of taunting rhythm and big, chomping piano chords that ranks among the great pop valentines to New York City. The album is split into two distinct temperaments—the "Night" side suggests the frantic bustle of clubland, while the subsequent "Day" side is more reserved, with tender ballads ("Breaking Us in Two"), thoughts about life's downers ("Cancer," with its paranoid refrain "Everything gives you cancer"), and outbreaks of bombast (most notably, "Real Men").

Even within these polarities, Jackson rarely stays in the same part of town for more than a few minutes. The brilliantly sequenced Night side begins in a surreal Hell's Kitchen gloom, and just as the ears get used to its abrasion, Jackson goes off in search of "Chinatown." He seeks a mind-set as much as a neighborhood, and his faux-Asian dissonances are so skillfully wrought that you hope he doesn't find it. Just when that starts to seem normal, Jackson puts on his two-tone shoes for "Steppin' Out," a whirring vision of a gleaming, idealized cityscape. Despite overexposure on the radio, this hurtling theme still works. It's maybe what Gershwin would be cranking out were he a Jackson contemporary and obsessed with the wizardry of techno—music that's futuristic and at the same time utterly romantic, a collision a lot like Manhattan itself.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1982, A&M
Key Tracks: "Steppin' Out," "Target," "Breaking Us in Two."
Catalog Choice: Big World
Next Stop: Squeeze: Argybargy
Book Page: 384

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#1 from John Adcock, Ashtead, United Kingdom - 11/05/2010 10:13

I’ve got to say that I think Joe Jackson recorded better albums than this, even though this netted him some wider publicity and a catchy single.  “Blaze of Glory” is shamefully neglected; panned by critics at the time and yet the perfect album at the times for the continuous music experience that CD offered.

Either way, he’s a talent that has been very much over-looked.

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