Music review
Jennifer Love Hewitt says she wants to be regarded as a singer even more than as an actress. “BareNaked” edges her toward credibility for that goal, but she’s far from there. Hewitt’s got an adequate voice and the versatility to shift around through genres.
Plus she gets co-writing credits for the bulk of “BareNaked’s” songs, which puts her ahead of many contemporary pop singers.
Yet the star of TV’s “Party of Five” and films such as “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and the recent “The Tuxedo” fails to make her musical mark because her voice isn’t distinct and “BareNaked” is neither edgy enough nor fluffy enough.
And although she’s working it a little too hard on the blues-influenced “I Know You Will” and the Alanis Morissette Lite vibe of the title track, at least she’s trying.
Elsewhere she and Brooks aren’t as effective, dumping out milquetoast pop/rock jangle on cuts such as “Rock the Roll,” “First Time” and “Stronger.”
Hewitt apparently has the capacity to build herself a laudable singing career.
She simply needs material that isn’t so vague and production that isn’t so bland to turn her career around.
Rating (five possible): 2-1/2
“Cruelty Without Beauty,” Soft Cell
“Cruelty Without Beauty” could be the uplifting final chapter of the story of Soft Cell, when our now-middle-age heroes, Marc Almond and Dave Ball, step away from their youthful past and join their successors in the present.
The duo was an early force in the electro movement a couple of decades ago, striking with the milestone hit “Tainted Love.” And after 18 years without a release, Soft Cell returns to cash in on the lucrative sound it helped found. “Cruelty Without Beauty” is hardly groundbreaking stuff, but it’s serviceably current with flashes of rousing synth-dance stimulation, as on the Pet Shop Boys-feeling single “Monoculture” that hangs on a sinister hook and a “Desperate” that contrasts Almond’s vampy lounge-like vocals with resonating bass.
Soft Cell slips into sappy silliness as a matter of routine, as when a despondent Almond looks for an emotional connection on “Last Chance” and “Together Alone.” And the clunker “Caligula Syndrome” is so embarrassingly theatrical that it shouldn’t be played anywhere except perhaps at a high school drama club’s cast party. Yet overall, though Soft Cell is no longer advancing the electro genre, it isn’t dragging it down, either.
Rating: 3
“FAERIES: A MUSICAL COMPANION TO THE ART OF BRIAN FROUD,” various acts (Windham Hill)
Forget about the fairies.
OK, so that’s impossible. They’re on the cover, they pop up on every page of the CD booklet, they fall out in a separate insert, and they’ll be all over the computer if they find their way into a hard drive.
But “Faeries: A Musical Companion to the Art of Brian Froud,” a roundabout promotional tool for two new books by the artist, is a curious and somewhat unanticipated music compilation. It’s also an enhanced disc with animation, an interview with the artist, never before seen images … in other words, it’s a mandatory purchase for fans of this fantasy subculture.
Anyway, considering only the music (which apparently is intended for the purpose of providing background noise for one to ponder fairies), “Faeries” initially flutters about with great promise before it settles down into a more expected, much-too-precious assortment of florid arrangements.
“Dreaming,” by techno master BT, is a bold bit of hefty electronic-beat dance music – opaque, propulsive and thoroughly gripping. Surprising diversity is also reflected in the lounge-cum-operatic strains of Sasha Lazard’s “Awakening,” a pair of mystique-filled dreamscapes by Balligomingo (“Sweet Allure” and “Wild Butterfly”) and the lushly feminine cuts “Nature’s Kingdom” and “Miserere” by Delirium and Paul Schwartz, respectively.
The ambience continues to flit about, though ultimately “Faeries” takes a sadly inevitable direction: Cirque du Soleil’s “Alegria” and Moodswings’ “Undistracted” are overdone with histrionic flourish, Michael Hedges’ “Aerial Boundaries” is a largely aimless exercise in jazzy acoustic guitar, and Paul Schwartz’s “Nevermore” is a hokey combination of dainty vocals and harp.
Oh well. That’s fairies for you.
Rating: 3
(Contact Chuck Campbell of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at http://www.knoxnews.com.)
(Contact Chuck Campbell of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at http://www.knoxnews.com.)