ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Robert Palmer, who played at the Beacon Theatre on Friday night, has kept his career going with a fascinating mixture of trends and movements. An early pop eclecticist, Mr. Palmer has spent his career experimenting with reggae, hard rock, African pop and New Orleans music: he comes off as a less literary version of Paul Simon. And because he adds the look of an Italian suit to his image, he's brought a Julio Iglesias-like sexuality to his eclecticism; at times Mr. Palmer looked like an out-of-town businessman whose real attentions were always focused on seduction.

He also gives the impression that he's trapped in the image of the playboy, as if he knew more than his fairly intelligent pop music allows him to show off. At times during the concert he'd stop and tell the audience the origins of any particular song: Zimbabwe one moment, Ghana the next. Then he'd go into innocent pop music that felt as if it were paying off bills.

Mr. Palmer's show was badly undermined by his band's arrangements. He has an absolutely distinctive, dry voice that he propels through his own interpretation of soul melodies and ideas, but at the Beacon, his arrangements, brittle and overactive, almost completely robbed the performance of its individuality. Synthesizer lines, in the upper register, and two drummers pounding on cymbals and other metallic instruments cluttered the high end of the sound spectrum, submerging his voice in a hissing. Mr. Palmer used a second singer to follow his voice, which also deprived it of some of its idiosyncracies.

This didn't seem to diminish the pleasure gained by the audience, mostly made up of women, which gave Mr. Palmer several standing ovations midshow. And songs like Every Kinda People, Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor Doctor) and Addicted To Love had a sense of pop integrity that resisted their shabby treatment.

Peter Watrous (The New York Times - August 26, 1991)