Steve Wynn's first solo album after dissolving
the Dream Syndicate, 1990's
Kerosene Man, found him exploring new ideas as a songwriter and bandleader, displaying a pop sensibility that would have been out of place in his old band.
Wynn's follow-up, 1991's
Dazzling Display, followed a similar path, with
Joe Chiccarelli whipping up a similarly crisp but muscular production sound and many of the same musicians returning for these sessions, in particular guitarist
Robert Mache, keyboardist
Jim Lang, drummer
Denny Fongheiser, and bassist
Fernando Saunders.
Wynn also had some extra help from
R.E.M. guitarist
Peter Buck, who appears on five tunes and helped
Wynn write the title track. But
Dazzling Display manages to sound bigger and more ambitious than
Kerosene Man, with
Wynn and
Chiccarelli taking greater advantage of the possibilities of the studio, adding strings and horns on several tracks, and the instrumental firepower gets a boost on these sessions. At the same time, there's a nervous edginess to
Dazzling Display that was not as noticeable on
Kerosene Man; the music has a different sort of bite, and though "Close Your Eyes" and "Tuesday" sound like hit singles (and the latter actually was one in Norway and Italy), most of these songs are sharper and less immediately forgiving than what
Wynn had written the previous year. Many of these songs hark back to the tales of lost souls that dominated
the Dream Syndicate's
Medicine Show; it's certainly fitting that
Hubert Selby, Jr. and
James Ellroy have songs dedicated to them on this album, and the atmospheric English-language reworking of
Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie and Clyde" (with
Johnette Napolitano sitting in for
Brigitte Bardot) fits with the other selections like a glove.
Dazzling Display found
Steve Wynn thematically drawn between light and dark, hardly for the first (or last) time in his career, but he rarely gave both sides as fair a hearing as he did here. [
Omnivore Recordings brought out an expanded and remastered edition of
Dazzling Display in 2018. The
Omnivore release included six bonus tracks drawn from live radio performances, all of which previously appeared on a U.K. edition of
Dazzling Display from 2000. While "The Long Goodbye" is a notable rarity, the real fun is in the covers, with
Wynn and his band kicking up their heels on reworkings of
Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble,"
Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing,"
Lou Reed's "Crazy Feeling," and
Bob Dylan's "Watching the River Flow." Add in an entertaining essay by
Wynn about the album and you get a version of
Dazzling Display that's a genuine improvement on the original.] ~ Mark Deming
![Dazzling Display [Expanded and Remastered Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0816651011810_p0_v1_s600x595.jpg)
![Dazzling Display [Expanded and Remastered Edition]](//prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0816651011810_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg)
![Dazzling Display [Expanded and Remastered Edition]](//img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.12.7)
![Dazzling Display [Expanded and Remastered Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0816651011810_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg)
![Dazzling Display [Expanded and Remastered Edition]](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.12.7)
