“Fruitcakes” Part two: A new unique sound

Greetings, and welcome! I trust that you are all wondering what songs are next. I can assure you that only the finest songs off “Fruitcakes” by Jimmy Buffett are ahead. If you missed the first half of my review, feel free to email me, I got like 15 copies of the Record back at my dorm to spare (I joke, it’s only, like, five). Regardless, I’ve built these songs up, so without further ado, I give you “Fruitcakes” part two.

Starting off with a ballad, “Love in the Library” is a simple love story that embodies what a romantic rendezvous in such a quiet place could be like. This song does much more than describe love, but rather it illustrates Buffett’s love for literature and books, a topic he has discussed previously, but it just really shows in this song. It is a sweet and simple song, but like with most great tales of love, Buffett leaves it open ended, imploring us to “write your own ending and hope it comes true.”

“Frenchman for the Night,” in some regards, can be read as a song about Buffett, an aficionado of French culture, but the lyrics of this song invoke images of the past, such as “La Vie En Rose.” The “Frenchman” is nostalgic for the past, but this isn’t the kind of rose-tinted nostalgia that we often think of: this is the blind longing for the past and trying to make up for lost time that Buffett warned of in “Cowboy in the Jungle.” The verse that exemplifies this the most is “if he’d only known, how the years would fly on by, such a simple crime, he’s run out of time, so he reaches for the sky.” Reminiscing of the days of “love and war” is good and all, but it cannot make up for lost years. The line “but you can’t escape the moon” demonstrates that no matter what you do, time will always catch up to you. It’s a slower song that utilizes a saxophone quite well, making for a great song.

In addition to serving as the title of the song, Buffett comedically claims that “’Vampires, Mummies and the Holy Ghost’ are the things that terrify me the most.” This song has some outstanding instrumentals, but it is just a song where Buffett let’s all the weird and goofy jokes in his head come out. He goes over a few random funny antidotes, of which I could never describe as well as Buffett sings it, so I would most definitely recommend listening to it.

I will need to discuss the developments in Buffett’s life soon, but for now, a summary will have to suffice. Buffett and his wife Jane are back together, and they’ve had another daughter, Sarah Delaney Buffett, aka, Delaney, the inspiration for “Delaney Talks to Statues.”I really love the instrumentals for this song; they are a good mix of the Buffett harmonica we know, thanks to Fingers Taylor, and a very playful
tone overall. This is a song to his daughter, and it’s a lovely story of the two playing together and just
enjoying the wonders of the world.

My absolute favorite song off this album is “Quietly Making Noise.” The song is multifaceted in its meaning, with a wide range of topics being touched upon. First and foremost, this song pays tribute to the city of Paris, and its vast history of the arts, with Buffett describing how, “singers and writers and poets have flocked here for centuries, the city of light is built upon mountains of memories.” In this song we also see rhetoric from Buffett that we’ve seen in the past, that being how he likes flying under the radar, where nobody knows his name, away from fame and glamor. It’s in these holes in the wall, where the endless distractions of the world don’t reach, that you can find people “quietly making noise.” These are places where music and culture proliferate, but people not trying to get the attention of the media or anything, they are playing, “not too soft, not too loud, just enough to draw a crowd.” Music is important for bringing people together, and this is what the song really illustrates. Beyond the lyrics, the song is masterful in its instrumentals, with it having distinct sounds throughout the song. The beginning is pure percussion, which sounds immaculate, then add in the guitar and the soft saxophones, and it makes for mysterious melody that really draws you in. Following the first verse the song transitions to the much more playful sound that we know Buffett for, but it’s still unique to his other tunes. For the bridge, a great mixture of steel drums and xylophones is used. I really can’t sing this song’s praises enough, I could talk at great lengths about what I love about it, but I don’t have the whole paper to do so. I will leave you with this; I do think this might be my favorite Jimmy Buffett song, due to it being well rounded
and outstanding in every imaginable way.

Welcome to the end, glad to see you made it. It’s a shame we made it to the end of one great album – a no skip album mind you – but we can find solace in the fact that we are still in the midst of the Renaissance era, and there is oh so much more to cover. Thank you for reading, and until then, take it easy…kind of like that one Eagles song.