SPORTIN' LIFE

"Sportin´ Life" is the 13th full-length studio album by US Jazz/ fusion act Weather Report. Now I recently stated in a review of Weather Report´s "Procession (1983)" album that Weather Report have never made a bad album in their whole career, but I guess it´s been some time since I last listened to "Sportin´ Life", because that statement certainly falls flat on it´s face after I´ve taken a listen to this album again.

"Sportin´ Life" is jazz/ fusion allright and it sounds unmistakably like a Weather Report album. So far... so good. The problem is that it sounds rather light weigth, stale and uninspired and to top off the not so nice things I could say about the album there is a horrible caribbean music influence in some tracks. Is it really a steel drum I hear? Dreadful IMO. Just take a listen to "Hot Cargo" to hear the worst example on the album. It´s quite possibly the worst song I´ve heard by Weather Report. There is quite a lot of vocals on "Sportin´ Life" compared to other releases by the band, but again they give the tracks a kind of easy listening feeling that makes the music hard to appreciate. I actually couldn´t find one track on "Sportin´ Life" that I really enjoyed. The musicianship and production is as usual of high quality though so at least that´s something positive.

If you think you can enjoy a light weight and easy listening version of Weather Report, "Sportin´ Life" might be just your thing. For me this was absolutely the last time I´ll take a listen to the album. Because of the high quality musicianship and production I´ll stretch though and give a 2.5 star (50%) rating.