Harry Chapin Verities & Balderdash CD

Live Recording

Personnel: Harry Chapin (vocals, guitar).
Arranger: Paul Leka.
Verities & Balderdash is a very strange and wonderful album. "Cat's in the Cradle" was the driving force behind the album's sales, but there's a lot more to appeal to listeners, along with enough personal, topical material to make it seem a bit didactic at the time, but Chapin was cultivating a politically committed audience. Verities & Balderdash walked several fine lines, between topical songwriting and an almost (but not quite) pretentious sense of its own importance, humor and seriousness, and balladry and punditry, all intermingled with catchy, highly commercial ballads such as "I Wanna Learn a Love Song" (which is about as pretty a song as he ever wrote). Chapin is in good voice and thrives in the more commercial sound of this album, which includes lots of electric guitars and overdubbed orchestra and choruses. He still loves to tell stories -- most are like little screenplays, with "Shooting Star" offering details and textures and a sense of drama akin to a finished film (in the manner of "Taxi"). The "haunt count" on this album is extremely high, boosted by gorgeous ballads like "She Sings Songs Without Words." "What Made America Famous" may be the one song that comes off as dated, a parable -- perhaps reflecting the near-meltdown of politics surrounding the Nixon resignation of 1974 -- about long-haired teens and crew-cutted firemen who discover a mutual dependence and respect for each other and reconciliation; it seems like ancient history and probably will be incomprehensible to anyone born after 1968. Chapin also lapses into excessive dramatics in the finale, which shamelessly borrows a couple of lines from one song out of the musical 1776. The album also offers a pair of humorous numbers on "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" and "Six String Orchestra," not the most significant songs in Chapin's repertory, but both adding balance to the mood. Producer Paul Leka (the commercial genius behind Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye") retained some elements of the relatively lean sound that characterized Chapin's debut album, embellishing it only enough to give the album some potentially wider commercial appeal. Even the cover art seems to reflect the two delightfully contradictory thrusts of this album: an image of Chapin posed like Uncle Sam on the military recruiting poster with a wry smile on his face. ~ Bruce Eder
Harry Chapin's fourth album, VERITIES & BALDERDASH, was his best studio effort and his most commercially successful, working its way up the US charts and eventually going gold. Its success is attributable, in part, to Chapin's excellent batch of tunes, which display his trademark narrative sensibility (Chapin's songs often unfold like short stories), literate wit, and knack for melody. VERITIES & BALDERDASH also works because its arrangements and production move away from the heavily orchestrated drama that mars some the artist's other studio work towards a cleaner sound that highlights the fine songwriting.
Chapin's best-known song, "Cat's in the Cradle," is here. Based on a poem by the artist's wife, the tune is a year-by-year account of a father-son relationship plagued by the father's too-busy schedule (his negligence comes back to haunt him when his grown son becomes too busy to spend time with him). The song is one of Chapin's most affecting and emotionally resonant. The songwriter's attention to character, anecdote, and emotional subtext is also evident in "I Wanna Learn a Love Song" and "What Made America Famous?" The sprightly story-song "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" provides welcome comic relief to this top-notch Chapin release.