Wednesday, Sep 21, 2005


Reviewed

Barbra Streisand, "Guilty Pleasures"
So Babs is back. She got some good advance press for her new album, "Guilty Pleasures," a few weeks ago when her war-themed video for the song "Stranger in a Strange Land" hit the Web and was linked to by bloggers right and left with either loathing or joy. She's also getting some mileage out of the record's lineage: Streisand and producer Barry Gibb last teamed up for the Grammy-winning album "Guilty," a fact to which the new record's title unsubtly refers.

As for the album itself? The reunion of the Funny Girl and the Bee Gee is happy to the point of being saccharine, writes the Times: "If there's such a thing as hypoglycemic bliss in pop, it is to be found on 'Guilty Pleasures,' the 25th-anniversary reunion album of Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb. The lush, celestially oriented collection, co-produced by Mr. Gibb with John Merchant, is a sustained musical sugar rush (sweeter even than their 1980 multiplatinum blockbuster 'Guilty') guaranteed to make you swoon (if your taste runs to musical Mallomars) without leaving you comatose."

The Los Angeles Times (two and a half stars out of four) finds that the album has a "something-for-everyone approach that works quite well ... sometimes." Its wide musical range takes Streisand "from Sade-like world pop to Madonna-Mariah dance-floor territory to theatrical pop ballads. But if a song is the singer's vehicle, a lot of these create the impression of Dale Earnhardt Jr. trapped behind the wheel of a Ford Escort. Streisand's magnificent instrument cries out for long stretches of road on which it can truly open up, and the conventional pop song form in which Gibb is most at home as a writer rarely gives her the long melodic straightaways and gentle curves to show us what she's truly capable of." Billboard disagrees on this point, writing "Gibb again elicits the very best from the songbird -- not only the sky-high vocal delivery that made her famous, but also a rare, indulgent playfulness," while USA Today (three and a half stars out of four) notes that "adult-contemporary pop doesn't come smoother or creamier than this collection."

Overall, the Philadelphia Daily News (B+) feels less of the pop princess and more of the throaty diva, saying, "There's a bit of that deja-vu, dance-pop, Bee-Gees feeling, but more often the set revels in Bab's mature, theatrical, balladeering nature," and Billboard chimes in by arguing that "nothing beats Streisand belting a ballad, and 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and 'Golden Dawn' are nothing less than classics." "(Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away" also comes in for special mention, being called "graceful" (USA Today) and "lovely" (Billboard). As the Times wonders, though, the album may still be trying too hard to trade on the fame of its ancestor: "The question remains: what does this style and substance mean in 2005? 'Guilty' rode the tail end of the 'Saturday Night Fever' craze. 'Guilty Pleasures' gambles on locating a nostalgic ground swell."

-- Scott Lamb