The Left Banke’s third album

The Left Banke, Strangers on a Train. Omnivore Recordings, 2022.

Strangers on a Train : Heartbreaker : Lorraine : Yesterday’s Love : Hold On Tight : And One Day : You Say : I Can Fly : Only My Opinion : Queen of Paradise

Bonus tracks: Airborne : I Don’t Know : Until the End : My Buddy Steve (Long Lost Friend) : Meet Me in the Moonlight : High Flyer

The Left Banke are best known for two 1966 hits, one major (“Walk Away Renée”), one minor (“Pretty Ballerina”). The group’s brief time in the spotlight was a tragic mess: brilliant songwriting (Michael Brown), unusual instrumentation (“baroque pop”), great lead vocals (from the Lennon-influenced Steve Martin Caro), Beatlesque harmonies (from Caro, George Cameron, and Tom Finn), competing singles by two groups claiming the Left Banke name, legal complications about airplay, and over it all, a toxic cloud of parental interference in the form of Michael Brown’s father, violinist Harry Lookofsky, aka Hash Brown. A musician who played with members of the Left Banke after the group broke up once told me matter-of-factly that Lookofsky had ruined his son’s life. Any resemblance to the relationship between Murry Wilson and Brian Wilson is coincidental and telling.

The Left Banke’s two LPs, Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina (1967) and The Left Banke Too (1968) were followed — if that’s the word — by Strangers on a Train (or Voices Calling in the UK), recorded in 1978 and not released as an LP until 1986. In recent years, there were sporadic reunion efforts (Caro not participating, Brown making occasional brief appearances) and talk of a fourth album. It never happened, and none of the principals are here to see this CD release, which supplements the ten tracks of Strangers on a Train with recordings from 2001 and 2002.

The ten LP tracks are a decidedly mixed bag, the work of a group trying on a variety of styles. Nine of the ten songs are by Cameron, Caro, and Finn, with one ill-conceived contribution from Shade Smith. Brown, who contributed no songs, may be playing keyboards on some. There are Beatlesque harmonies (“Heartbreaker,” “Yesterday’s Love”), lovely ballads (“Lorraine,” marred by synthesized strings, and “And One Day”), and a song that eerily anticipates “Free as a Bird” (“I Can Fly”). Those last two songs are the most Left-ish on the album. An effort at guitar-driven rock (“Hold On Tight”) is hardly distinctive. The spirit of Billy Joel seems to hover over the ballads; “Only My Opinion” and “Strangers on a Train” suggest to me Paul McCartney and Wings. “Queen of Paradise,” a disco effort (Shade Smith), is best forgotten. It’s unfortunate that this song should end the LP, which follows the UK track sequence. The US release ended much more fittingly with “Yesterday’s Love,” mixing memory and desire.

The bonus tracks (also available as a digital EP) are no mixed bag. They’re worth the price of admission. Brown is the writer or co-writer of all six, all demos, more or less duets, Caro singing and Brown playing keyboards (with minimal contributions from additional musicians here and there). It’s clear that even when Brown was far from public view, he was writing brilliant songs. And Caro, long after he gave up performing, was still in great voice. “Airborne,” for voice, piano, and a string quartet, shows an “Eleanor Rigby” influence. “I Don’t Know,” “Meet Me in the Moonlight,” and “Until the End” sound like postmodern parlor pieces. The strangest song here, “Buddy Steve (Long Lost Friend),” is the story of an ocean voyage to look up a friend. It’s a surreal variation on “September of My Years” (Jimmy Van Heusen–Sammy Cahn):

When I was twenty-five
I wondered if he still was alive
So I went off to Milan to find my long-lost friend

Most poignant is “High Flyer,” a song of melancholy longing, a grown-up “Walk Away Renée”:

High flyer, the bells are ringing
High flyer, the sky is singing
High flyer, the clouds are moving low

The clouds are moving; nothing stays. Now that’s a fitting end to a Left Banke album.



Related reading
A handful of Left Banke posts

[Details: Yvonne Vitale, Michael Brown’s wife, co-wrote “Until the End.” Ian Loyd, who with Brown founded the group Stories, co-wrote “Meet Me in the Moonlight.” A factoid: Brown traveled to Florida to record with Caro. I have read (somewhere) that Caro’s non-participation in Left Banke reunions was at least in part a matter of his refusal to fly.]