Still Truckin'

The Grateful Dead are gearing up for a celebration of their 25th anniversary next year with the release of their 12th studio album, Built to Last. Originally scheduled for release several months ago, the Dead's long-awaited follow-up to 1987's surprise hit In the Dark was delayed in production and post-production until this week. But Halloween is as good a time as any for a new Grateful Dead album, and Garcia & co. have managed to provide some pleasant tricks and treats on their new album that indicate the Dead will indeed be truckin' for some time to come.

Built to Last

By the Grateful Dead

Arista Records, 1989

The Dead continue to grow musically with Built to Last, which contains four songs authored by Brent Mydland, the keyboardist who joined the Dead in 1979. Mydland's work provides some interesting counterpoint to the more traditional Dead songs contributed by Garcia and Weir, though some of his offerings (e.g. "Just a Little Light") come across as over-synthesized, excessively popularized tracks that sound like out-takes from the Go to Heaven or Shakedown Street sessions.

But when Mydland succeeds in his writing, he proves that he can provide freshness and originality within the framework of a group that has been working together for nearly a quarter of a century. Mydland's best work to date is represented here in the form of the poignant lullaby "I Will Take You Home," which concludes Built to Last.

Wonderfully under-orchestrated, "I Will Take You Home" is a sentimental song for voice and piano sung by Brent to his sleepy young daughter. Violins and music boxes provide the soothing musical texture which unites the piece and sets it apart from the rest of the album.

The fact that "I Will Take You Home" is a song that the Dead couldn't have written 20 years ago is exactly what sets it apart as something truly special. For music fans who have spent the summer listening to some of the other dinosaurs of rock and roll refusing to die before they get old, watching the Dead accept and acknowledge their age with grace and dignity through compositions like this one is a pleasure.

Overall, Built to Last is a very soft-spoken album. The tempered pace may disappoint fans who enjoyed the quick cadences and easy accessibility of In the Dark, but the soft, melodic nature and homogeneous texture of Built to Last lends the Dead's newest project strength as well as weaknesses. The album does hold up well after repeated listening, and while none of the tracks are particularly catchy, they are interesting enough to be fresh the second and third time around.

Long-time Dead fans will criticize Built to Last for its gloss and commercialism. The Dead have certainly discovered the benefits of modern marketing, packaging a deluxe picture disk CD edition of Built to Last with a set of Grateful Dead playing cards and providing order forms in the standard editions of the album so that fans can purchase Grateful Dead coffee mugs, t-shirts, and bumper stickers by mail.

Musically, while the lack of a stand-out single does make Built to Last appear less commercial than 1987's In the Dark, the album does retain the dominant vocals and background instrumentation that have defined the Dead of the 1980s and set them apart from their psychedelic past. Bob Weir's "Victim or the Crime" is the exception which proves the rule on the Dead's newest release--this seven-minute, 33-second composition quickly devolves into a reflection back on some of the Dead's early tonal experimentation and instrumental jam sessions.

If you're looking for cryptical envelopment, Built to Last is not for you. Lyrically, this proves to be one of the Dead's weakest albums, and the heightened clarity of the vocals on most of the tracks only exacerbates this problem. Lyrics are saccharine, repetitious and occasionally grating. Few of the songs are distinguished by musical or lyrical ingenuity.

Yet Built to Last does show that after 25 years, the Grateful Dead can continue to produce interesting if not particularly inventive music. Built to Last is a pleasant, relaxed album that takes few risks and provides few surprises. Above all else though, Built to Last proves that the Dead can continue to grow musically while maintaining a strong link to their past. And with a past as long and varied as the Dead's, that's no small accomplishment.