ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

A Yacht Rock Odyssey is a 72-track 4CD (or a 24-track 2LP) compilation of Yacht Rock music curated by American TV/radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist Katie Puckrick.

Puckrick is best known for hosting British youth TV magazine shows The Word and The Sunday Show in the 1990s. In 2019, she presented a two-part BBC TV series on Yacht Rock called I Can Go For That: The Smooth World Of Yacht Rock. It was accompanied by a three-part BBC Radio 2 series.

The term Yacht Rock conjures up the lush West Coast sound from about 1975 to 1985: escapist jazz-inflected soft rock, burnished to a high sheen by session musicians and producers at the peak of their powers. As Katie has noted, Yacht’s laid-back sound and lovelorn lyrics were the perfect soundtrack for listeners in 1970s America trying to tune out the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, along with economic upheavals.

Katie explains where her love of Yacht Rock began: “When I was a kid in suburban Virginia, Yacht Rock was the music that sailed out of girlfriends’ cassette players, older boys’ muscle cars, and grown-ups’ cocktail parties. Encompassing lifers Michael McDonald, Toto and Average White Band as well as toe-dippers like Carly Simon, Robert Palmer and the Pointer Sisters, Yacht’s frisson springs from its slick sound set against lyrics about aspiration and alienation, hedonism crossed with thwarted desire. The blade might be smooth, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sharp.”

She also points out why the sound still resonates for music fans globally: “In our world of poisonous political unrest, social turmoil and digital hectoring, it’s balm for the soul in an anxious age.” She continues, “Yacht Rock is currently enjoying reappraisal by a new generation of music lovers driven by the genre’s sonic sophistication and nostalgia for a Miami Vice-tinted past. But Yacht’s appeal goes deeper than just being catnip for crate diggers and style junkies. The magic of Yacht Rock is that just listening to it makes us feel sexy, happy and rich. It seduces you with the promise that life will be breezy and blissful, filled with dancing and forever golden sunsets and that everything’s going to be okay. And even when it isn’t, that’s fine, too. Because in Yacht’s world of grownup screwups, even melancholy has allure, as long as you’re wearing an orchid in your hair, or a louche linen blazer with the sleeves pushed right up."

Katie Puckrick has split the CD set into four separate musical voyages of discovery: 

• "Luxury Yacht: Some of the most beloved West Coast classics this side of Malibu"
• "Sirens Of The Sea: Female singer-songwriters and interpreters who broadened the palette of Yacht Rock"
• "Deep Dive: Shining a light on rare Yacht treasures"
• "Night Sail: A smoochy set to keep you and the moon company."

Robert Palmer is featured twice on the 4CD edition. The US Top 20 hit Every Kinda People from 1978's Double Fun album appears on Disc 3 while Give Me An Inch from 1975's Pressure Drop is included on Disc 4.

The 2LP set only features the latter track on Disc 2.

Katie Puckrick Presents A Yacht Rock Odyssey is released on August 30, 2024 via Demon Music Group.