You know the joke, “It might look like i’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level I’m really quite busy”? Bruce Hornsby’s post-1990 career is a little like that. As far as a lot of people are concerned, Hornsby may as well have quit making music after his last release with the Range, 1990’s A Night on the Town, but to those who have kept listening, that album only marks the spot where things really started to get interesting. From 1993’s Harbor Lights on, Hornsby has moved steadily away from the tasteful piano pop that made him a star, indulging a wanderlust that has been reflected both off his records (during his stint with the Grateful Dead, for example) and on. Along the way, he’s worked with a long and varied list of virtuosos, including Pat Metheny and Bela Fleck, and cut an eclectic swath with his albums, dabbling in programmed beats (2002’s Big Swing Face), bluegrass (2007’s Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby), and jazz (Camp Meeting, recorded with Christian McBride and Jack DeJohnette). Even though he’ll forever be popularly identified with “The Way It Is” and “Mandolin Rain,” those songs really only begin to scratch the surface of Bruce Hornsby’s music.

This is not to suggest that Hornsby’s more recent music is necessarily more difficult than the hits you remember, or even that he’s above copping to commercial pressures once in awhile: his last pop album, 2004’s Halcyon Days, was a piano-dominated affair, featuring plenty of radio-friendly songs and guest appearances from Eric Clapton, Elton John, and Sting. It was a slow pitch down the middle for Columbia — one which the label, predictably, barely managed to turn into a bunt. Now on the Verve Forecast roster — and having tamed his more idiosyncratic impulses, at least for now — Hornsby returns to the pop fold with the 12-track Levitate. (more…)