Word: mood
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...problem is that the songs never quite get there. Are they melodious? Yes. Lyrical? Yes. Passionate? Hmmm. The lyrics are, but as far as the mood goes, mellow is a far more appropriate adjective. Each song is contemplative and smooth, but no track is dynamic enough in its own right to ever truly distinguish itself. The title track comes close, but never fully peaks. Also of note are the poignant, emotive "Less Than Strangers" and "The Only One," a haunting arrangement featuring Emmy Lou Harris on harmony vocals. Most of the other tracks have a tendency to blend into...
Listening to the Cure's first studio release since 1996's Wild Mood Swings, one wonders why it took Robert Smith and company four years to write nine songs that sound exactly the same. Considering speculation that Bloodflowers may be the Cure's oft-threatened last album, it seems that this droning noise could possibly be the sound of ancient gothy New Wavers finally boring themselves to death. As a Cure fan, I show no restraint in tapping my inner reservoirs of bitterness, misery and melodrama to moan: believe me, it's that bad. The End is Near...
...part, the songs on this UK-top-10 album use the music as a point of departure, and that approach works. In Handel's "Largo from Xerxes," the sounds drift by: shimmering chords, spacey burbles, eerie bells, groans, rumbles, tinkling chimes, thumping bass and more. This is pleasing, unobtrusive mood music, where pure sound is the main attraction...
...earth. But see it from the side, within sight of the floating models of Jupiter and Saturn, and it's the sun. Get underneath, next to the giant tripod that supports it, and it's the underside of a sci-fi space pod. Stand back in a properly reflective mood, and it suggests the expanding bubble of creation itself. And maybe also that famous perisphere at the 1939 World's Fair--not all the associations here are cosmic...
...session of bittersweet jazz songs. Legrand selected the tunes (all his own, including Afterthoughts and The Summer Knows), and his piano persuasively conjures the smoky languor of a Left Bank nightclub. But the star of this show is Norman's brilliant voice, which cuts through the nocturnal mood like a shaft of light. Though you can't help wondering what the diva could do if she shrugged off the opera-house manners and let herself go a little more, there's no denying an instrument of such grandeur...