Notes

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After exploring a sound that filtered blue-eyed soul through excursions into worldbeat, Robert Palmer began to move in a more commercial direction on 1978's self-produced Double Fun. The overall sound of the album pushes towards disco (Tom Moulton, a remixer/producer and star of the American disco scene, assisted on a handful of tracks) and a lot of the tracks play up Palmer's love of reggae-styled grooves. The result was a commercial success and produced a Top 20 hit with "Every Kinda People," a catchy call for brotherhood that fleshed out its gentle pop reggae groove with tasteful orchestrations. Elsewhere, Palmer turns up the energy with "Best of Both Worlds," a bass-driven dance tune that shows off his vocal prowess with its cleverly arranged and complex vocal arrangement, and "Night People," an evocative tale of nightlife built on a percolating groove that borders on jazz-funk. The only real problem with Double Fun is that it occasionally allows style to overwhelm substance: "Where Can It Go?" has a dreamy ballad sound and "Love Can Run Faster" sports a solid reggae feel, but neither tune has a melody strong enough to keep them from drifting off into the ether. Despite this flaw, Double Fun stays afloat thanks to its ability to deftly juggle genres while maintaining an overall consistency to its production style (example: the hard rock guitar riffs that spice up the otherwise dance-oriented "You're Gonna Get What's Coming"). Casual listeners may want to pick up this album's hits on a compilation, but Robert Palmer fans will definitely want to give this album a spin.