If this CD’s title is an attempt at a double entendre, it fails completely. If it’s a preemptive warning that Steve & Pat aren’t taking themselves all that seriously, what’s the point? We got ears, don’t we? And doesn’t it run the risk of insulting Annie Sellick whose vocal standards are anything but low, and whose work here does nothing but give the lie to such a title.

Ms. Sellick, who already has three tasty CDs in the catalog under her own name, has a fluidly rhythmic conception and a sinuous delivery free of affectation. Her soprano instrument has a pleasingly husky bottom which she uses to good effect in interpreting lyrics. She follows Doug Weiss’ bass into the “Ocean” and easily convinces that she knows all too well the depth of Irving Berlin’s rhetorical question. Her “You Don’t” and “Days of Wine” are good, too, but she really nails “Happens,” opening a cappella and conveying a certain weary resignation about going through life “just missing trains and catching colds.” Her other two vocals, however, are rather negligible. “Killing Lies” is an original she wrote with guitarist, Bergeson, and it has a distinctly amorphous country pop flavor which might make it a more appropriate vehicle for Lorrie Morgan or Trisha Yearwood. “Farewell” is a Jackson Browne ditty and to ensure its pop sapor Bergeson breaks out his harmonica and adds a wheezy scrim, which could facilitate your decision to quickly move to the next track.

Interestingly, although the liner photo shows all six of the session’s musicians posing together, I don’t recall hearing Sellick and tenorist Kreitzer on the same track. His best moments—and the strongest instrumental Jazz moments of the session— arrive with Wes Montgomery’s “Four On Six” line, when everyone seems to dig in and put out. For the rest of his spots, from “Road,” right through Ellington’s “Reflections” to the smooth Jazz of “Miracles,” Kreitzer seems content to fall in with the group’s downhill coasting, which is compounded by Shapiro’s overuse of whatever gizmo calls forth the echoey overtone effect from his vibes, and Bergeson’s guitar which is too often excessively twangy. It can’t help but be a true endorsement of Annie Sellick’s vocalizing that on four out of six of her tracks she survives such slack support.

The last track listed, “Gotta,” is 25 seconds of self-indulgent studio un-hilarity. Perhaps it’s what led to the idea that “Low Standards” would be an appropriate title, after all.

—Alan Bargebuhr
© Cadence, December 2005