Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Ten Summoner’s Tales is an exemplar of a type of CD that makes me re-evaluate what a CD review means on MPL.  The tradeoff these CDs pose is whether to write from more of an evaluative perspective or a personal one.  Due to the style of the non-CD review content of this blog, I’ve always come down on the personal side, but coming across a well-executed CD that does not grab me always causes a re-assessment.

When I was taking my reviewing class four(!) years ago, my instructor pointed out that you should review something to give others an idea of whether or not they’d like it.  His gig was primarily movies, so his example was, "If you don’t like horror movies, when you review a horror movie you should evaluate it on whether or not somebody who likes horror movies would like it."  I don’t disagree with that approach at all, and use it as one of many guideposts in my reviews, but for a couple of reasons, it’s not really what I do here.

For one, I think it’s a bit of an old media mindset.  I don’t mean that as a pejorative; I just think that in an era when there were fewer sources of information and opinion, this quasi-objectivity made sense.  Now, though, you can get all kinds of opinions on musical artists and their output, and I feel the only reason to be read is to be interesting.

The main reason I tend to give more weight to my reaction, though, is that this blog is about me.  It’s essentially a public journal.  It may seem like I’m writing about a CD or a politician or a baseball game, but I’m really writing about my reaction to that thing.  Offhand I can only think of one regular reader I’ve ever had who didn’t know me personally.  I’m fine with that because, again, what I want to do with MPL is create a record of my life, and a record of how I’ve felt about collections of music serves as a pretty damned good proxy of my life.

So while I could spend time writing about Sting’s intelligently-written music, the proficiency of his supporting musicians, his clever lyrics, or the expertly-engineered sound, none of that captures the fact that these songs just do not grab me.  Where I should hear passion I hear chilliness and distance.  I respect the music, but I can’t love it.

I have always felt this sense of detachment from Sting’s music, and it’s always amazed me how passionate his fans are about his music.  No matter how much I listen, I cannot understand how he affects so many people so deeply.  I imagine that a KEN who loved Sting would be one that would write a review like this for, say, Faith No More’s Angel Dust, praising its execution and brilliance, but left alienated by the overwhelming assault on his ears.

I like plenty of music that might be described as passionless.  In particular, big chunks of the avant-garde music and death metal I praise do not grab me in the same way this doesn’t.  The difference is that those CDs tend to be more cerebral, exciting the puzzle-solving neurons of my brain, which in turn engage me in a sort of passionate way.  Sting’s music is smart, yes, but it’s not quite at that level of stimulation.

So, in the spirit of my reaction to this album, let’s polish this off professionally but dispassionately.  High points are the clever lyrics in "Seven Days," the emotional depth of "Fields Of Gold," and the nearly emotional "It’s Probably Me."  Low points are the ridiculous spoken portion of "St. Augustine In Hell," the ponderous incessance of "Heavy Cloud No Rain," and Sting’s insertion of his opinions of politics, war, and technology into a love song ("If I Ever Lose My Faith In You").

If I were evaluating this album on its terms, for what it intends to be, I would have no problem giving it my highest rating.  For MPL, though, I’ll just shake its hand, thank it for the occasional stimulation, and be on my way.

Rating:
  
Mixers: "Fields Of Gold"
Keepers: “Love Is Stronger Than Justice (The Munificent Seven),” “Seven Days,” “It’s Probably Me," "Shape Of My Heart”
Filed Between: The Steve Miller Band (Greatest Hits 1974-78) and Stinkfish (…Does It Again)

I won’t make promises I know I cannot keep

- “Beautiful Girl”

Anything reminiscent of Pigs In Space has to be good.  Other than the name of the band, though, the only thing this recording has in common with that Muppets Show sketch is that it hearkens back to a 70’s subculture.  There’s a little sci-fi in here, but just enough to recall the spaced-out, swaggering riffs of this album’s targeted subculture flashback: British glam rock circa T. Rex.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of who’s singing on this disc.   While the Langdon brothers are the credited vocalists, they channel Mick Jagger on “Anonymous” and Axl Rose on the album’s highlight, “2nd Avenue,” and they do an amazing impression of Michael Stipe on “Almond Kisses.”  Wait, that actually is Michael Stipe…wow, that makes it even harder.

But that’s about the only thing that’s hard about this disc.  It struts right out of the speakers with its leather pants and flashpots from the get go, ripping off a soaring guitar solo here, adding chorused vocals there.  It’s all immediately in your face, completely unashamed of what it is.

Unfortunately it blows its wad a little early, like a 19-year-old boy pulling out every trick he knows on the first f**k.  It doesn’t make it any less good, its just that on the fifth go-around the thrill is a little bit gone, the promise slightly unfulfilled as you realize, oh yeah, I did get it all the first time or two…that was great.  This is an album you wish wouldn’t have called after that first encounter so you could have in your head how great a long-term relationship would have been instead of the disillusionment, albeit an enjoyable one, you’re now stuck with.

Rating:
  
Mixers: “Goodbye Violet Race,” “Mungo City,” “2nd Avenue,” “Carry On”
Non-keeper: “Skylark”
Filed Between: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut soundtrack and Sparks vs. Faith No More (“This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us”)

Little things that just don’t matter
Still could get me mad as a hatter

- “Hot Shit”

Quasi either took a sharp left turn on this record, or I just wasn’t paying close attention before. In the past their lyrics seemed to lie firmly in fantasy, describing Seuss-like worlds where fluent animals in unlikely situations acted out impossible and nonsensical scenarios. There’s a little bit of that on Hot Shit!, but the lyrics are now much more strikingly and overtly political.

Released in 2003, the anti-war message is inescapable. Explicit insults are handed out to W and the administration in “White Devil’s Dream” and the 9/11 imagery of “Seven Years Gone” is unambiguous. Here, though, lyricist Sam Coomes still does let the esoteric creep in by assigning playground nicknames to members of the cabinet. “Seven Years Gone” also seems to foreshadow Bush’s political isolation at the end of his presidency by drawing a comparison between him and The Flying Dutchman, while  “Master & Dog” excoriates both parties as “the elephant wields the rod while the donkey throws you a bone/I’d rather have a bone than a beating I suppose,” in lyrics that are applicable at times when Democrats are in power, too. By the end of the song, Coomes goes the full kill-‘em-all, all-politicians-are-corrupt proletariat route and throws up his hands at the whole system: “Master is the country squire/And the housedogs lay by the fire/But it gets pretty hard for the dogs in the yard.” As much as I try to make lemonade out of our political system, it’s hard not to let these lyrics resonate as our squires let yard dogs without health care die every day…to take the analogy to its non-poetic ends.

Things changed far more for Quasi lyrically than they did musically onthis release. Take away the lyrics and this fits right in with their previous catalog. What Quasi does best they do even better here, namely mix dissonance and atonality into wonderfully crafted pop songs in a way that’s impossible not to notice but is also very appealing. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this band to anybody that liked catchy melodies and safe music, but they push the boundaries everywhere. They’re like the perfect introduction to experimental music.

In the past the band has tended to separate these two elements, leaving an abrasive song here and a song from The Beatles’ lost tapes there. On this disc, though, it’s all put together perfectly. Every song is the perfect mix of everything Quasi does and the album itself is crafted without flaw, with each song being the perfect one to follow the one it does, resulting in what might be the most palatable middle finger to consonance of all time.

Rating:

Mixers: “Seven Years Gone,” “Drunken Tears,” “Mama Tried,” “No One,” “Good Times”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Quasi’s The Sword Of God and Queen (The Platinum Collection)

I’ve just about got this down to a science now. I knew I was going to detest this album and that the distress of spending any more time than I had to with it would take years off of my life, so I held on to a great album preceding it until I knew I would have enough clearance in my schedule to get through this one quickly. In the spirit of just pushing ahead, I’m not going to go into too many details about why this CD is as awful as it is. I will give you just two things to hate on.

First, every single song here starts off with some simplistic guitar riff that cuts through the rest of the instruments, lasts 2.5 to 3.5 bars, pauses for the remainder of the four-bar stanzas, and is repeated either four or eight times before the vocal track comes in. There’s no composition, it’s just annoying-riff/pause/repeat. Every. Single. Song. I’m not sure how nobody noticed this, because it bugged me for the only two Soup Dragons songs I’d heard before I got this CD (one of which was “Divine Thing” which is the song you probably know from this disc and has some redeeming qualities).

The second hate-worthy feature is the inanity of the lyrics. I’ll provide a couple of examples.

The first example is from “Getting Down.” “Every way you move/And everything you choose/Has a special flair/That’s apparent by your hair.” I don’t know…I guess he really wanted to rhyme flair. Then there’s “Dream-On (Solid Gone),” which goes “As your lips reach mine/It just feels like heaven.” “Just”? Needed another syllable and couldn’t come up with anything better?

Okay, I can’t leave it there, because there’s also the most insipid rock lyric ever, from “Everything”. “You elevate in a special way/You turn the night into day.” Wow…night into day…I’m breathless…where did you come up with that?

Oh, and I have to share The Soup Dragons’ artist page on VH1. The “featured album” is this album’s follow-up…from 1994. And the latest “News” is that singer Sean Dickson is turning 31…in 1998. Put that in the you-know-a-band-is-dead-when column.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Divine Thing,” “Everything”
Filed Between: Soundgarden (Down On The Upside) and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut soundtrack

Is there anything I could do
That someone doesn’t do for you?

- “Coast To Coast”

This is a tough album to review, as it’s the one Smith was working on at the time of his tragic death. His former producer finished it off with the help of his former girlfriend and bassist (that’s one person), and it was released almost exactly one year after he died. A darkness encompassed it for a while, but after listening enough to get past that pall I was rewarded with yet another fantastic set of songs.

Figure 8, this album’s predecessor, got more attention, and kind of served as Smith’s breakthrough, but listening through the four albums of his I now have, Figure 8 is a bit of a lull on the way from where he was on XO to where he was here. Here he has the more varied instrumentation and huge sonic sledgehammers (“Don’t Go Down,” “Strung Out Again,” and “King’s Crossing” alls feature giant guitar waves socking you in the gut) of Figure 8 combined perfectly with the heart-wrenching falsetto of XO.

While a great album, this album still falls just short of the stratosphere reserved for higher ratings, in part because, like Figure 8, it takes a bit of a nosedive for about the last third, with “Little One” being a complete throwaway, “A Passing Feeling” featuring a too-strident piano, and “The Last Hour” making you work too hard to find its delicate melody inside of its sniveling exterior. Still, this doesn’t end all bad, as “Shooting Star,” which I’m pretty sure is about a girl I dated in college, carries the entire second half:

Going up some stream
To fuck some trophy boy…
When it was me
I was momentarily proud
Drunk on dreams
…
No one gets off with you very long
‘Cause you don’t feel bad when you lie
…
Your love is sad, shooting star

The lesson here, clearly, is don’t f**k with Smith’s heart, as he’ll immortalize your evil in song. There’s plenty more amazing in the lyrics, like “Coast To Coast,” where the entire song is spent with a tough facade about how he’ll forget everything only to beg back in at the end, or “Twilight,” where he turns down a potential new love to stay with his current baby because, among other practical reasons, “If I went with you/I’d disappoint you, too.” He nails the short-form answer as well, with fantastic succint metaphors like a girl who was “cracked as The Liberty Bell” or his “heavy metal mouth.”

I’ve given all three of Smith’s albums reviewed on this blog four lunchboxes, and I’d probably give the same rating to XO, too, if I were to review that one. In some ways that’s not fair, but I’ve listened to them all again and stand by my ratings. Smith’s an elite songwriter with an amazing amount of emotion in his voice that carries his incredible melodies perfectly. He makes my guts weep…but there’s always a handful of songs on an album that keep it from my highest ratings. That said, if I were to rank the four I have, this one would probably be at the top, though Either/Or would be awfully close behind if not tied. Figure 8, while a very good album, would be my least favorite…too much weakness. There’s a very clear line between the top two and bottom two. This is a high four lunchboxes.

Rating:

Mixers: “Coast To Coast,” “Don’t Go Down,” “King’s Crossing,” “Twilight,” “Shooting Star”
Non-keepers: “Ostrich & Chirping,” “Little One”
Filed Between: Smith’s Figure 8 and The Smiths (Singles)

Typical me, I started something and now I’m not so sure…

– “I Started Something I Can’t Finish”

Turns out I really like the Smiths, which is a surprise, especially considering there’s not a single member of this band named Smith, which was a huge f**king disappointment.  Anyway, I think it’s because even though the songs are all about being sad and lonely, lead singer Morrissey doesn’t spend much time being hesitant about it: he’s sad and lonely and wants to feel you up and he’s going to make sure you are aware of that, even if it means he’s going to have to perform the musical equivalent of following you around and breathily whispering his problems into your ear.  Or maybe it’s because the band just writes great songs.

It’s late and this is a greatest hits album, so without further ado….

“Hand In Glove” – this is my second-least favorite song on here, and if there’s a track where Morrissey is all timid about being gay, sad, and lonely, it’s this one.  At points it sounds like he’s forgotten they’re recording a song.

“How Soon Is Now?” – If you know one song by The Smiths, this is it.  “I’m lonely and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does.”  I always thought this was Depeche Mode or somebody like that.  This song has that signature guitar wail…have any rappers used that?  They should.  More bands should cover this.  Huge and awesome.

“Shakespeare’s Sister” – Whoa whoa whoa.  Stop.  STOP!  This is awful, and an awful lot of awful.  This is like the day the band tried coffee or something.  Easily the worst song here.

“That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” – The narrator of this track is telling his friends that their jokes about people less fortunate than them aren’t funny, which hits close to home because if you ever say something like “grammar nazi” to describe somebody who’s persnickety about grammar or “recycling nazi” to describe somebody who is vigilant about recycling around me I will definitely point out the inappropriateness of using the word “nazi” in that context for the way it diminishes the true horrors of the Nazis.  This is a mediocre track until the “…and now it’s happening in mine” part, at which point the album ratchets it up to 4.5-lunchbox levels right up through the second-to-last track.  If “Hand In Glove,” “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” and “Shakespeare’s Sister” weren’t on here, or maybe even if two of them weren’t, this would probably be a 4.5-lunchbox album.

“Shoplifters Of The World” – I love this guit solo…it’s damned near glam rock.  T. Rex lives!

“Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me” – A perfect example of how Morrisey and The Smiths get their whiny, sad reputation: “Last night I dreamt/That somebody loved me/No hope – no harm/Just another false alarm.”  I can’t argue with the fact that these lyrics are blatantly dark, but let’s not forget that these songs are at least as good as the lyrics are depressing.

“There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” – As a lousy song at the end of this album, this serves to be the thing that that one-night stand said right after the mind-blowing orgasm that served to make her a one-night stand.  Oh this hurts here.

Rating:

Mixers: “William, It Was Really Nothing,” “How Soon Is Now?,” “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” “Panic,” “Girlfriend In A Coma”
Non-keepers: “Hand In Glove,” “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” “Shakespeare’s Sister,” “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”
Filed Between: Elliott Smith (Figure 8) and Sneaker Pimps (cassette single “Tesko Suicide (LP Edit)” b/w “Post-Modern Sleaze”)

No formal review as this is just a mix of Quasi’s 20th centry output that came along with J-mez’ collection.

Mixers: “Smile,” “Tomorrow You’ll Hide,” “Kiss The Snowman,” “Our Happiness Is Guaranteed,” “Chocolate Rabbit”
Keepers: “Pay Me Now Or Pay Me Later,” “California,” “I Give Up,” “A Fable With No Moral,” “R&B Transmogrification,” “Nothing From Nothing,” “The Skeleton,” “Ape Self Prevails In Me Still,” “Under A Cloud,” “Two By Two,” “Unto Itself,” “It’s Hard To Turn Me On”
Non-keepers: “You Fucked Yourself,” “Nati Bati Yi,” “Please Do,” “When I’m Dead,” “My Coffin”
Filed Between: Puya (Fundamental) and Quasi’s The Sword Of God

We’ll crucify the insincere tonight

– “Tonight, Tonight”

You and me both, Billy.

Can you be a fan of a band if you don’t like what is universally regarded as their best album? ‘Cuz that basically describes the love triangle between me, Smashing Pumpkins, and Siamese Dream. Smashing Pumpkins’ debut album, Gish, had me from the first time I saw one of its videos on 120 Minutes even though I found lead singer Billy Corgan to be an insufferable sufferer of rock star martyr syndrome. (His scolding of the audience when opening up for Red Hot Chili Peppers in St. Paul in November 1991 is seared in my brain.) Then Siamese Dream came out, and I thought, “Huynh, so that’s where he was going with that sound.” All of Gish’s vitality was replaced with slick production and by-the-numbers songwriting, all of the debut album’s energy was replaced with ringing chords designed to leave space for on-stage rock star poses. It sounded great, but was the sonic equivalent of the hot, vapid blonde that catches your eye at first but has nothing else to offer. So much lost potential….

You either rule or suck in my book, especially in those chapters written as high school merged with college, and with every Siamese Dream track played on the radio, which I think was every other song on the radio in the summer of 1994, Smashing Pumpkins further cemented their reputation in my mind as “suck.” That was that: dust off hands and banish their post-Gish output from my ears forever. (The wretched Corgan-produced Hole album Celebrity Skin didn’t help their case at all.)

And, really, the fact that I could write off a band once and be done with them was one of the only damping effects on my CD consumption. Which is why, now that I’m working through the S’s of J-mez’ collection and find myself face to face with another very good Smashing Pumpkins album, the one immediately after Siamese Dream, in fact, it’s still undetermined whether I’ll re-evaluate this evaluation process.

Given their status as rock giants in 1995, I’m surprised I didn’t hear more of this double-disc’s singles on the radio and revise my opinion earlier, but the only song I recollect is the merely decent “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” with its regrettably histrionic lyrics “Despite all my rage/I’m still just a rat in a cage.” (Do you think Trent Reznor and Billy Corgan would be best buds given their similar lyric styles, or would they hate each other because their martyr complexes are realized in such similar ways? They must have met at some point…hard to believe they never toured together.) But I’ve even managed to make some sort of peace with that song. The pity-me-the-rockstar lyrics still roll my eyes every time, but now that the rest of the album reminds me of PinkFloyd’s The Wall, the song takes on its role as this album’s “Comfortably Numb.”

In fact this album is quite reminiscent of that album whose lead singer loved to play the melodramatic martyr card and often drove full-speed over the edge of cliché. Now, this is no The Wall, but I couldn’t help be reminded of it, with its double disc-ness and alternately sweet songs full of fragile neediness; dreary, sorrowful dirges; and raging screamfests. Song order here is crucially important, just like the 1977 musical autobiography of Roger Waters. These discs were not meant to be listened to on shuffle, as the sonic arc is just slightly short of perfect (like almost everything in the CD era it could have greatly improved with a touch of trimming). The album’s opening and closing tracks are entirely mediocre but get kept for their role as mood-setting bookends. Lyrically, it’s got the aforementioned lead-singer-as-melodramatic-martyr, self-hatred, and even pigs (I know, that’s more Animals, but still it ignites a lot of The Wall-associated neurons). And as it turns out, Corgan himself set out to make “The Wall for Generation X.”

Corgan’s still awfully whiny, both in terms of timbral quality and lyrical content, but he’s not nearly as bad as he used to be. Or still could have been for that matter. “Muzzle,” one of the album’s best tracks, starts off oh-so-regrettably with, “I fear that I am ordinary/Just like everyone,” but then Corgan immediately saves it with what are probably his best lyrics on the album: “To lie here and die among the sorrows adrift among the days/For everything I ever said and everything I’ve ever done is gone and dead/…/Great loves will one day have to part.” Ah, now there’s the beautiful style of melodrama that makes me feel like I’ve still got that awful 17-year-old haircut (for the record, with no help from me it turned into a beautiful 18-year-old haircut).

The album takes a drastic turn for the worse during the second half of the second disc, but still, what you’ve got here is the intensity, life, and creativity of Gish, augmented with a daring use of musical styles (not all of which work…see “We Only Come Out At Night” for a huge clunk) and widely varying instrumentation in new and challenging ways (love the outrageously distorted handclaps on “Love”), all with the gorgeous production quality of Siamese Dream, wrapped up as what must add up to the band’s definitive statement. So can I be a fan of this band given my disdain for their biggest hit album? I’ll say I can, and I’ll write off Siamese Dream as a blatant money-and-attention grab, as a way for Corgan to introduce the world to his true musical statement: Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.

Rating:

Mixers: “Jellybelly,” “Fuck You (An Ode To One),” “Love,” “Galpogos,” “Muzzle,” “Bodies”
Non-keepers: “To Forgive,” “In The Arms Of Sleep,” “We Only Come Out At Night”
Filed Between: Gish and Smile Empty Soul (”Bottom Of A Bottle” b/w “Every Sunday”)

Elliott Smith makes a critic’s job tough as he doesn’t mix things up too much different from album to album. (Heck, he hardly mixes things up too much from song to song.) So when I sit down to review what seems for him to be an arbitray collection of his compositions, I can’t talk about how he’s moved from there to here. All I’ve just got is the same description: mostly quiet songs, often with sparse instrumentation, delivered at a moderate tempo with a breathy voice.

It’s all good, or at least mostly good with a decent amount of very good thrown in, but for the life of me I would not be able to name one of his songs by ear, even at gunpoint and with a list of said songs in front of me. I like almost everything, but I guess what does set this album apart from his previous albums is that there’s very little that I super like.

Part of what falls into that super like category are the few places where Smith rocks it pretty hard. The album opener louds things up early with big orchestration about midway through, “L.A.” has an awesome rawk scratchy guitar bit…you know, the kind that comes on right before the huge, ringing chord, and “Can’t Make A Sound,” the album’s penultimate track, even does the epic build thing at the end, which gets the track kept despite a bleaker-than-bleak beginning. “Everything Means Nothing To Me” is really this kind of experimentation in a nutshell: a 2.5 minute ditty whose musical and lyrical material all gets presented in the first minute, but just when he’s got you hypnotized and forgetting about it, there’s a drum fill and modern key sounds start distorting the music and, under the right influence, everything around you.

In another development, Smith’s less self-hating here than he was on, say, Either/Or. Instead, he’s turned his meek delivery and incisive lyrics into the perfect misanthropic weapon: passive-aggression. “Somebody That I Used To Know” and “Easy Way Out” both basically boil down to, “Boy, that was really a shitty thing to do. I think you’re a bad person, but, you know, that’s okay.”

The album pretty much falls off a cliff almost three-quarters of the way through, right after “Color Bars,” but before that track is the album’s only true mix CD candidate…the only one that belongs in that category unconditionally: “Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud?” It’s awfully close to being the Best Song Ever with its perfect encapsulation of every one of Smith’s tools: bitter lyrics, hauntingly beautiful melodies, and a subtle syncopated rhythm that puts a wonderfully pained sneer on your face all at once.

Rating:

Mixers: “L.A.,” “Stupidity Tries,” “Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud?”
Non-keepers: “Junk Bond Trader,” “In The Lost And Found (Honky Bach),” “Happiness/The Gondola Man,” “Bye”
Filed Between: Smith’s XO and Sneaker Pimps (cassette single “Tesko Suicide (LP Edit)” b/w “Post-Modern Sleaze”)

A Tale Of Three Reviews

The first review lived in my head. It was based on a few listens to this CD and a conversation with My Baby. It told of how, yeah, Sinatra’s fine, but come on, folks…he didn’t even write these songs, Dean Martin’s voice was better, and all these songs really do is evoke a mood, like you should be watching some When Harry Met Sally knock-off romantic comedy, especially the in-love montage where the guy trips and falls in Central Park or they’re window shopping at Christmas and they’re so so ridiculously happy, and you know they are because Sinatra is playing over their silent antics. The real reason Sinatra is Sinatra, the review said, is not the music as much as it is the rock star persona. He had wealth, women, and both legitimate and illegitimate power, setting the archetype for the late 20th-century rock star before we even knew what rock and roll would be. The songs were the dredges of big band music, sucking all the life out of the already quick-to-be-shlocky genre and pandering to the lowest common denominator with cavity-causing string riffs. “And what’s with these liner notes?” the review concluded. “Why is this egghead drowning me in superlatives, trying to convince me that Sinatra had some kind of artistic rigor and aesthetic supremacy my ears tell me is missing?”

The second review was published almost three years ago. It starts a lot like the first review, complete with the Dean Martin comparison and attribution of Sinatra’s stardom to his aura instead of his singing. The review then went on to talk about how some of the songs on that album were pretty good…or at least that many of them had good parts.

Which brings us to the third review…this review. It starts with the first review, then merges into the second review. It doesn’t back away from anything in the first two reviews, it’s just that I’ve already said everything in those two reviews. Except, really? These are the 20 best songs you could get from eight years in the prime of this icon’s career? Gee, overrated much? But anyway, beyond the infectious melody and the Lawrence-Welk-with-good-looks schmaltz, what’s left to discuss?

Well, let’s talk songwriters. Specifically, let’s talk about the Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn songwriting team. How in the world are these guys responsible for the two worst songs on this disc as well as two of its three best? “Love And Marriage” plods with its obvious nods to the overzealous, righteous censors and arbiters of Hollywood values of the day as well as its just plain phrasal plodding. “High Hopes” suffers from the saccharine treatment as well…I think the song is a carcinogen. Its only redeeming quality is that it’s not “Love And Marriage.” Meanwhile, “(Love Is) The Tender Trap” survives its pro-marriage cornball lyrics with a grooving sax line that seems to imply you don’t have to give up the single life when you get married (wink wink) and the catchy-as-hell “Come Fly With Me” is only not a mixer because its lyrics are just too cute.

That’s it…that’s all I’ve got that’s new. Maybe in three years I’ll go through the same struggle with Sinatra. Or maybe by then I’ll have some more insight into the multiple personality mystery that is Jimmy VanHeusen. Either way, it’s probably safe for me to now say that, while I still think he’s drastically overrated, I like Sinatra, though this album (the 50’s) helps his case a lot, just by being far superior to the last Sinatra CD I reviewed (the 60’s and 70’s).

Rating:

Mixers: “(Love Is) The Tender Trap,” “Witchcraft”
Keepers: “I’ve Got The World On A String,” “Learning’ The Blues,” “You Make Me Feel So Young,” “The Lady Is A Tramp,” “Come Fly With Me”
Filed Between: The Simpsons – Songs In The Key Of Springfield and the Singles soundtrack