Bring the Family (1987)

John Hiatt’s eighth (!) album may or may not be his best—I know I’m not the only one who thinks so—but at least, as Wikipedia notes, “not a Hiatt performance goes by without a generous helping of its songs.” It’s the home of “Thing Called Love” and “Memphis in the Meantime.” It features Nick Lowe once again, though this time not producing, and also Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner. The songs by all accounts were mostly written in the shock of Hiatt’s recent sobriety, sometimes more self-consciously, sometimes less. I realized coming back to Bring the Family the last few weeks that I will never be able to judge it very objectively (though I am trying here!) because it is just one of those albums. It was a kind of lifeline and provided a soundtrack at a notably painful time when I needed to do some soul-searching recovery of my own, going through a separation and divorce and hitting a reset button on my life in a way I never have before or since. There are other albums I associate with those times, which seemed to just float up and became important—Diamond Life, Don’t Tell a Soul, King’s Record Shop, Spike—but none landed quite the way Bring the Family did. I see better now, attempting to judge, how Hiatt often pushes the boundaries of acceptable cliché, in, say, “Have a Little Faith in Me,” or in the album finish of “Your Dad Did,” “Stood Up,” and “Learning How to Love You.” Recovery songs all, they can verge on self-pitying or confessional, the insights perhaps more fuzzy than sharp. But I was fully open to all of it on nakedly emotional levels and it’s not exaggerating to say this set sustained me, often on a daily basis. I started seeing Hiatt in performance when I could during that time. His taste in sidemen, as on this album, always reflected a priority for high levels of musicianship, but Hiatt’s awkward stage manner eventually came to hinder them too much for me. I take Hiatt as a boomer album artist and actually quite good at it when you start paying close attention to them. I may need to look up a few more while I’m at it.