Like a hypo-hygienic not-so-nice ice cream man, Claire has a dirty little scoop: Linda-doo-ron-Ronstadt has perfected, like a late 19th-century French painter killing the Catskills, the art of the impression.
Listen to Bob-not-Jakob-Dylan-not-Thomas’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, and I’ll strangle in my dangling bangles if she’s not singing like a canary but channeling like a cat the voice of Jennifer Warnes gone peevish. And on “I Go To Pieces”, I swear to-not-at you she performs a wavering-quavering true-or-falsetto laryngeal lift of Aaron Neville noodles non troppo.
Unmisfortunatelylike, the rest in peace of this album leaves more depression than impression. Linda’s vocals are more passive than a passel of pacifist patsies passed out on patchouli. An elaboration on my alliteration: The “Give Me A Reason” ukulele is groovylele, but it is thrown for a loop and a loss by oblongy lead vocals and background vocals wheezy as a leaky organ and there’s your disturbing medical image for the day. The music on “Heartbreak Kind” is as tight and twitchy as co-writer Marty Stuart’s pant-pantaloons, but Linda doesn’t ride the music, it rides her.
Claire O. is fair though, and must like a barehanded catcher admit she got a cool groove from the piano-tinkle-sprinkled “Ruler Of My Heart”, which not warlock sounds like it was recorded in a cocktail bar in an igloo on the moon. Linda’s Laid-Back Lunar Lounge.
Despitefully, most of my scribble is quibble, and as I dip the nib to nip this rip, I am a despondent correspondent whose rooty-tooty-duty it is to classify this album as more downer than get-downer, with more snooze than blues. A nice-try-no-fly with more pallid than ballad. In short, it lacked snort.
