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
|
