Michael Franks
It's hard to avoid measuring Franks, the wispy-voiced jazz-rock-blues-Latin composer of all idioms, against his own song here, Love Duet "On our own/We have grown/But freedom means/That you're all alone/And you spend your time/Being cool and clever." This album, probably his least jazz-and Latin-oriented, is full of such typically novel rhymes as "All of the people in Wonderland have no regrets/They've all misplaced their raison d'êtres." Franks hires on such talented supporting personnel as sax man David Sanborn and drummer Harvey Mason, as well as singers Luther Vandross and Bonnie Raitt. Lack of ambition isn't one of his problems; Franks is currently completing a stage musical based on the life of the painter Gauguin. What's absent is feeling. You hear a lot of intellect and musical skill in these songs, but very little heart.
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