Ringo Starr does, as his latest single ahead of shock new album, Look Up, have time to kill The Beatles drummer has turned to the western way of riding horses and tipping a ten-gallon at townsfolk. Nothing could suit him more, bar the growth of tentacles from his back and a sudden urge to live under the sea. Time on My Hands is a charmer. Starr has returned to what he does best in a genre he has already worked over once before. His ill-forgotten yet completely charmed Beaucoup of Blues is a collection of light romantic fluff but the joy within it is hard to argue against as it envelops and suffocates its listeners. Where Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash are still making the most of the country genre, despite the latter being dead for two decades, why not throw another legend in there?
Key to the success of Time on My Hands is that it does not feel like a leftover piece of Beaucoup of Blues. Even if it were, it would take a sleuth with considerable time on their hands to figure out the link. Starr has a genuine love for the genre and his bluesy, laid-back folk romance is a charming time. We may come to regret the bridges we have burnt but the case for doing so, although diminished, is still an effective root for Starr to pull at. It makes his contemporary country exploration a charming one, where the drumming takes a backseat to make way for the traditional instruments of the genre. It is a song of isolation and loneliness, as good a trail song as the greats from the contemporary period of country’s chokehold on the charts.
Starr does not aim to revive the genre but finds comfort in the flickers of love, the former flame which guides him through Time on My Hands. That desire for another loving embrace from someone either lost for good or temporarily at odds with the protagonist is a bold burst of late-stage brilliance from Starr. His eagerness to reconnect, to look back despite marching forward, lends itself to the very core of the country genre and even paves over the shortcomings of those hammy string sections which are bolstered towards the end. Instrumentally sound works come through before this, though, with some slick country fundamentals heard within and pulled apart well. Cool basslines and steady pedal steel working find their way to the front of this multi-instrumental powerhouse.
Ditching the lighter feel of works like What’s My Name or Broken Boy, Starr appears to have afforded himself the time to write with a confident flourish. It is a tone he has not quite grasped since Goodnight Vienna. To be over someone is to still long for their touch and Starr finds a thread of beautiful intent through Time on My Hands. He should have pivoted into country far sooner than he did but his affable presence in the post-1980s bubble made him the everyman and outcast of the Fab Four. Not a bad place to be when efforts like this latest song come out of the blue. Time on My Hands may be a flash in the pan before the release of Look Up, and, if it is, we will still be all the better for it.
