Quality Lamb
ANNABEL LAMB “Once Bitten” (A and M L38036).1 was sitting quietly at the window in the sun minding my own business when this album hit me. I picked myself off the floor and there was the woman singing. I looked at the record sleeve. Annabel Lamb. Should be exported, I thought. In fact, I had listened to this album once before, amongst a pile of other review copies, and had not been too impressed. Too much like other MOR female singers was the initial judgment, which shows how wrong a reviewer can hear. Annabel Lamb is a singer-singwriter from Tooting, London, and all but one track are her own compositions. It’s just not the lyrics but the style of music that gets you. There are snatches of jazz, reggae, blues, and even the modern romantics, but not enough of each to be boring. “Missing” is a class track, that has just the right qualities for Grace Jones, and what is more it has a nice little story line.
“Once Bitten” carries a gripping bass line and “Dividing The Spoils of Love” is another poignant story-
teller. Reggae is on trial on "Red
For Danger,” and there is also a strange instrumental “Snake Pliskin.”
The only cover is The Sound’s “Heartland,” and although it is not as dramatic as the original, it still sticks out for its unusual style. With little fanfare, Annabel Lamb has created an album that has interest stamped all over it.
RITA COOLIDGE “Never Let You Go” (A and M L 37891). Rita Coolidge is the type of MOR singer I was trying to describe in the previous review. Plenty of covers, luxurious music, nice romantic stuff, nothing heavy. Rita Coolidge has a fine voice and it is used to great effect here, but unlike Annabel Lamb, it is not sung from the heart. A choice of a couple of songs might bowl some people over. One is the Culture Club hit, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me,” which makes no impression on the original, and Joe Jackson’s “Fools In Love.” I prefer Joe. Rita also teams up with Jermaine Jackson on Seger’s “We’ve Got Tonight,” a romantic song wrung out to the end. Bob Seger’s voice might be rusty, but you still can’t beat the original. “Never Let You Go” does not get into overkill like many albums in such a situation, but I still believe that Rita Coolidge could, and can, do much better. SHARON O’NEILL “Foreign Affairs” (CBS 58P237889). This is what is considered to be O’Neill’s
American album and it shows. Recorded in California, produced by John Boylan (Boston Linda Ronstadt), featuring Tom Scott, Timothy B. Schmidt, Bill Payne, and others, from the cover to the songs, aims for the American market.
The songs generally feature a social angst, love’s labour lost, or at least in danger of losing, wrapped up in a West Coast AOR sound. The most daring is “Maxine,” a girl who walks on the wild side, the type of song that Sharon O’Neill is most adept at conposing, although usually a little more unambiguously. Some people may be annoyed at the obvious American tilt in the music, and even the Yank slang, but O’Neill spells it out in the most personal of songs — “Kids In Our Town” — when she sings “I joined a rock ’n’ roll band in ’72/“ Worldly dreams, so out of reach/"And I’m still seeing them through.” She has set high sights, and you can’t stop growing, musically or otherwise. It must be hard to stamp your own authority on things when surrounded by name musicians. But the quality is there, and you cannot help but admire the fact that all the songs are her own and not just cover versions chosen because they sound good. The album is perhaps not as anonymous as I have painted it, and I hope the next one is more individual yet. —NEVIN TOPP.
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Press, 30 June 1983, Page 14
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657Quality Lamb Press, 30 June 1983, Page 14
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