Equal Strain On All Parts

Equal Strain On All Parts

There’s poetic justice to the title of the last album Buffett completed before his death at 76 from skin cancer on the Friday before Labor Day 2023. It’s a saying his grandfather once used to describe a good nap, a perfect closing sentiment from the bard of American leisure and all those who aspire to it. The King of the Parrotheads lived many lives over the course of his 50-odd-year career (Bourbon Street busker, Key West castaway, Margaritaville tycoon), throughout which his sunny demeanor was a constant. And though he’d managed to turn his beach bum lifestyle into a billion-dollar brand, his position never wavered: A hard day’s work paled in comparison to one spent with a fishing pole in one hand and a beer in the other. Buffett generally stuck to lighthearted themes in his later years, but the songs on Equal Strain, his 32nd studio album, are cosmic in his own breezy way: “Galaxies and nautilus shells look the same to me/So ask yourself this question: How couldn’t it be?” he wonders in harmony with the Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo on “Ti Punch Café,” a dream of the rum bars of the French Caribbean. He imagines an even more exotic paradise on “Nobody Works on Friday,” a rousing rebuff of the 40-hour work week, and sneaks in a few final digs on influencers on “Portugal or PEI.” The title track, a country ballad, feels like a reprise to “The Captain and the Kid,” a standout from his 1970 debut, written in his grandfather’s memory. In that song, a young Buffett had watched the former sailor struggle to adjust to the equilibrium of old age; 53 years later, he recalls his grandfather’s advice: “I didn’t always see the wisdom at the time, but I’m older now.” It’s the same sense of gentle acceptance that drives “Bubbles Up,” a song that Paul McCartney called Buffett’s best vocal performance ever. (McCartney played bass on “My Gummie Just Kicked In,” a song inspired by a particularly hazy dinner shared by the musicians and their wives.) The rootsy slow-burner was co-written by Will Kimbrough, a fellow Mobile, Alabama, native and longtime Buffett collaborator, who devised its 3/4 time signature as a tribute to Buffett’s fourth album, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. Its quintessentially Buffettian theme comes from a tried-and-true scuba technique: To orient yourself in an emergency, follow the direction of the bubbles. “Let’s pop a cork to the rough and the right/To the bright blazing days and the sweet starry nights,” Buffett sings peacefully in his affable drawl, a coda to a life lived about as good as you could ask for. “There is light up above, and joy, there’s always enough.”

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