Do artists bury their work under well-known songs of the same name to save themselves the embarrassment? Possibly. It makes sense in the case of Bill Wyman, whose latest effort, Drive My Car, is a fascinatingly simple work with as plain a premise as other songs relating to vehicles with four wheels. Queen had this trouble with I’m in Love With My Car, but at least they did not make a whole record from this questionable thought process. Wyman has followed his passions, which appear to be vehicular, and paid tribute to his hobby with a new album. But The Rolling Stones bassist has neither the voice nor the lyrics for this album, made up of daytime television background instrumentals and longing tones of the open road.
No, you did not leave the repeat function on your Spotify run-through of Drive My Car, the title track and opener Thunder on the Mountain sound identical. His everyday observations of toast and tea by the sea rely on the primitive rhyming structure, the same impact in this sentence provided in the song. Sugar rushes and a sense of freedom provided by a vehicle feel like a novel concept which Wyman is taken by. He is undeterred and has such a childish maintenance of what he finds interesting, it is both depressing and honest. A collection of songs for those who feel nostalgia for weekend trips to the seaside. Eating, driving and kissing his way through the country in a convertible which feels more like romantic interest than any of the partners seated in it makes Drive My Car an impenetrably personal experience. Not because Wyman has anything fascinating to describe but because he finds himself infatuated with a convertible and shows it more love through his weak lyrics than anyone along for this journey.
But between the bleak fadeouts where what little momentum is squandered and the repetitive guitar curse heard throughout, there is nothing. His gruff sound has potential but is nowhere close to being fulfilled. This is all it is. A repetition of the title, a fade out at the end because these instrumentals are not interesting enough to hook a listener into hearing them to a justifiable end, and it repeats. On and on Wyman goes, prattling on about his car like a demented grandparent. Drive My Car is a frank look at his career as a solo artist. Unremarkable at the best of times because his experiences are of the everyday. But there is beauty in those day-to-day activities which Wyman fails to identify. Storm Warning is the closest he gets to it, a redeemable call to arms against stormy weather.
Those too-literal moments, the knife-cutting tension in the air lacks a ballast of reality, an occasion which serves a purpose to those lyrics. Rambling and nonsensical at times, particularly the cultural references made on Ain’t Hurtin’ Nobody, which will make sense only to Wyman and his car-loving life. He is not hurting anybody, not physically anyway. But the mental strength needed to make it through his dire new offering is a strength which leaves us once the goodwill of the eighty-seven-year-old pacing around the recording studio is dropped. A bad album from a musician with ties to a legendary band. That is all Drive My Car is. Wyman references James Bond on Rough Cut Diamond because he has no replicable or interesting experiences of his own. Fool’s Gold seems an apt closer. Only a fool could want this album played to them again.
