DEFYING GRAVITY
Cheryl Wheeler
It says something that the title track of Cheryl Wheeler's insightful and melodic new album is her version of someone else's song. With only one other cover in her six previous albums -- this is her first collection since 1999 -- Wheeler must really think a lot of Jesse Winchester's 1978 tropical-flavored romantic meditation on our place in the cosmos.
Maybe the Timonium native, now residing in New England, needed an outside source for some upbeat inspiration. The majority of the originals in the 13-tune collection are poignant reflections on relationships, earnest in tempo and temperament.
"Since You've Been Gone" opens the album with the lines: "A woman my age, sittin' here cryin' / I ought to be stronger than I am"; "Must Be Sinking Now" deals with making a friend of a former lover (and it ain't working); "Beyond the Lights" offers this image: "And in my sleep you are crying still." In the next song, "summer's almost over and I'm crying but I don't know why."
Wheeler sings and plays these songs about self-doubt with utter confidence; in less competent hands, they would come off as dreary and self-pitying. But Wheeler, who famously comes alive in concert, knows how not to overdo it: The liveliest songs here are two humorous ditties that were recorded at New York's Bottom Line, one about classical music cell-phone ring tones and the other about the mundane tribulations of air travel. They go a long way toward lightening the mood.
-- Buzz McClain
IT'S TIME
Michael Bublé
Canadian singer Michael Bublé takes great advantage of the market research done by his predecessors. In concert, his jazz/pop repertoire pulls from crowd pleasers of the Rat Pack era ("Mack the Knife," "Come Fly With Me") as well as newer tunes like Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and Van Morrison's "Moondance."
Bublé's second album, "It's Time," is another collection of predictable favorites delivered in his silky-smooth voice. He glides over the melody of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" and projects a note-perfect version of the Gershwin classic "A Foggy Day (in London Town)." He barrels through a jazzy "Can't Buy Me Love," injecting a few lines from "She Loves You" to turn it into a mini Beatles tribute.
But Bublé's flawless vocals aren't always on target: "Quando, Quando, Quando" is an insipid duet with gravel-voiced pop singer Nelly Furtado; their voices often clash, both in tempo and in timbre.
The most unexpected track is "Home," the album's lone original (co-written by Bublé). Its simple, brass-free arrangement contrasts with the jazzy instrumentation on the rest of the album. Bublé's unusually delicate vocals turn "Home" into a sweet lullaby that shines in comparison to his brashness elsewhere.
Although Bublé's song choices -- the Drifters' "Save the Last Dance for Me" and Stevie Wonder's "You and I" -- are destined to make his female fans swoon, he shows promise as a songwriter on "It's Time." Hopefully in the future he'll rely more on his own words and less on the time-tested songs of others.
-- Catherine P. Lewis
