NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Hornsby’s new, reflective album starts off sweetly and melodically, a musician looking back at a fascinating life. Then it gets weird. That’s by design.
“I’m going along very nicely and then I might just throw something at you,” the three-time Grammy Award-winner warns from his home in Williamsburg, Virginia. “I’m well aware that a whole lot of my old-time fans just hate that.”
“Indigo Park,” a 10-song set that arrives Friday, is a concept album of sorts as Hornsby mulls over his childhood and where he’s come from. To borrow a line from one song, it’s “one life in reflection.”
The album — which features appearances from Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, Bonnie Raitt and Bob Weir, his late Grateful Dead bandmate — is a darkly comic collection that handles memories with soulfulness — and some quirks.
Hornsby, who came out of the gates swinging with the socially conscious hit “The Way It Is” in 1986, knows which songs may trip up the average listener these days — Nos. 3, 6 and 9, which would be “Entropy Here (Rust in Peace),” “Alabama” and “Might As Well Be Me, Florinda.” They’re, in a word, challenging, with dissonant and complex time signatures.
“Look, I love simple music. There’s simple songs on this,” he says. “But I also love complexity. And I’m interested sometimes in making a sound I haven’t heard before.”
Challenging lyrics and sounds
“Indigo Park” captures Hornsby’s restless musical creativity and love of language. Not many pop albums these days causally drop the words “priapic” or “tumescent” or make reference to math’s Fibonacci sequence.
“This is just a window into my goofy world,” he says, explaining that the Hornsby household loves funny words and a bit of wordplay, with maybe dad telling one of his sons he’s looking “a bit concupiscent, pal.”
Hornsby calls himself an “inveterate reader” and many of his songs have been inspired by literary fiction, like 2019’s “White Noise” which was a nod to David Foster Wallace’s novel “The Pale King.” “I guess you could really just call me, simply in one word, a snob.”
On one new song, “Silhouette Shadows,” Hornsby references learning about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy over the school intercom. He was a third grader in a small, conservative Southern town, and suddenly, his classmates started celebrating, hoping Richard Nixon might take over.
“I was really alarmed and confused/Watching the children parroting parent’s views,” Hornsby sings. “Ancient scenes and cryptic dreams.”
The song’s music was inspired by a fugue by classical composer Dmitri Shostakovich that he had written for a Spike Lee project, but the filmmaker never used it. So Hornsby took it back: “That was me trying to make a sound I hadn’t heard before.”
‘Nooks and crannies’
Another song — “Ecstatic,” which features Bonnie Raitt on vocals — sounds like light-hearted playground banter, and it sort of is. It comes from the basketball chants Hornsby heard from parents as his older son, Keith, competed on the basketball court for Louisiana State University.
“You fouled, you did it, raise your hand admit it/That’s right, you fouled, you did it, raise your hand admit it,” go the lyrics. “That’s right, you walked, you traveled and got caught.”
“Indigo Park” marks the fifth-straight album Hornsby has tapped guitarist Gibb Droll and the musician says it gives listeners a peek into the inner life of the singer-songwriter.
“It’s more personal. I think his fans will feel like they’re getting a glimpse of the man and what he thinks about,” says Droll, who plays on five tracks.
As for the weirder songs, the guitarist says that’s part of the Hornsby experience. “I don’t know of anyone that has continued to push the boundaries the way he does,” Droll says.
“If it’s truly art, it should challenge you at some point. The listener should be challenged to feel ‘Do I like this? I don’t know. Oh my God, I think I love it.’ And then by the eighth time, hopefully, you’re looking forward to those little weird nooks and crannies.” Droll says.
Hornsby, who plays accordion, dulcimer and piano on the collection, picked an Edward Hopper print — “Night Shadows,” a copy of which he owns — as the album cover. It depicts a man alone on a dark street.
“I thought, well, this could be called my aging record. When you’re about gone or ready to be gone you realize you’re alone, man,” he says. “I see this lone guy walking around. I thought that’s me right now. It spoke to me in that way. So, I used it.”
“Indigo Park” comes 40 years after the single and album “The Way It Is,” Hornsby’s debut. In the years since, he has been impossible to categorize, having songs scattered across country, adult contemporary, rock, jazz, bluegrass and folk charts. He’s played with the Grateful Dead and everyone from Bob Dylan to Chaka Khan.
He laughs that the songs hold up from that early time, but he might fire the frontman. “I’m not a fan of that singer. I guess I’d call myself a slow learner in that way. It’s gotten better through the years, at least to me.”
