James Taylor review, American Standard: Expect reassurance rather than revelation

The kindly demeanour and treacle soft voice – not to mention the lofty honours in art and culture bestowed on him to celebrate 50 years of plucking heartstrings clean out of our chests – belie James Taylor’s troubled history. There have been heroin addictions, serious mental illness and no shortage of heartbreak in this 100-million-selling story, so it’s perhaps little wonder he finds difficulty in pouring himself into new material. 2015’s Before This World was his first album of original material in 13 years, and that took a stint of intense self-isolation to complete. Instead, he’s largely spent the millennium lending his pastoral folk tones to cover songs, from Christmas classics to the evergreens of Motown, soul and Fifties rock’n’roll. He’s become the Michael Buble it’s OK to get married to.

His 19th album turns his acclaimed arpeggios to the world of music theatre, raiding the likes of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Guys and Dolls and Show Boat for tracks he can make swoon or swing. For Taylor, it’s like building an open goal out of cast recording albums – his “Moon River” drifts languidly by on dappled eddies of acoustic and reed, his “Ol’ Man River” is all supine Dixie delicacy, his “Almost Like Being in Love” (from Brigadoon) is the sort of Mississippi folk hammock of a tune that Mark Twain, had he been a man of notes rather than letters, might have writ.

The ballads are bread and butter; it’s when Taylor reinterprets the livelier – and cheesier – showtunes that his artistry shines. “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” shifts between Boston blues verses and choruses of gentle ragtime, “Pennies From Heaven” becomes a rat pack swing-along and Oklahoma!’s “The Surrey With The Fringe On Top” suddenly oozes folk class. The album’s highlight is Taylor’s gossamer take on South Pacific’s “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”, bringing a 21st-century poignancy and warning to a story of inherited prejudice: “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late/ Before you are six, or seven, or eight/To hate all the people your relatives hate."

Beyond the musicals of his youth, Taylor dips into jazz age classics made famous by names such as Billie Holiday and Glenn Miller – “Nearness Of You”, “Teach Me Tonight”, “God Bless The Child”, “My Heart Stood Still” – which he uses as interludes of sunset samba, draped with Bacharach horns and Carmen Miranda bongos. They’d give the record a cruise ship pallor, if Taylor didn’t exude such ineffable charm throughout. Expect reassurance rather than revelation and you’ll find the lesser-worn pages of the American songbook elegantly traced.