Sea Level recorded their fourth album for Capricorn on the cusp of the label's 1979 bankruptcy, and Long Walk on a Short Pier only earned a brief release before finally being issued more widely in 1998 by a resurrected Capricorn, with distribution through Mercury/Polygram. The album continues down the path of the band's third album, 1978's On the Edge, caught up in a disco-fied era and trying a little bit of this, a little bit of that, hoping that something might catch fire. Or maybe, with the group photo on the front cover showing the bandmembers fishing off that short pier, they were "Casting out a line/But no one's biting" -- to quote Randall Bramblett's "God Was in the Water" from his first New West recording, 2001's No More Mr. Lucky. Anyway, Long Walk on a Short Pier begins with Chuck Leavell's slick R&B/dance track "Tear Down This Wall," recorded by the band at Capricorn's studio in Macon but punched up with a horn section recorded at Bramblett's old stamping ground of Sea Saint Studio in New Orleans, where he had recorded Light of the Night, his stellar -- and far less slick -- sophomore solo album released by Polydor in 1976. The horn section enlivens "My Love," another uptempo track written and sung by Leavell, but one begins to wonder why the keyboardist apparently stopped composing instrumental music for Sea Level to focus on clubby R&B/pop/rock (the horns play with more authentic feeling on "Thirsty" and "Morning Light," a pair of Bramblett numbers co-written with guitarist Davis Causey).

1		Tear Down This Wall
2		Canine Man
3		My Love
4		Just a Touch
5		I'm Thirsty
6		Two 'n Two
7		Morning Light
8		Too Many Broken Hearts
9		Twenty Miles From Nowhere

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