While she hasn't had a mainstream hit in nearly five years, Gaynor has, as she promised, survived. She is also still frustrating to listen to. There are times when she sounds like a latter-day Dinah Washington with all that tough, world-weary emotion. On this album there are touches of that power on a tune Gaynor wrote with her producer Joel Diamond, More Than Enough, and she begins a version of Jerry Herman's La Cage aux Folles song I Am What I Am, with a slow, penetrating verse. It is the kind of singing that can make people stop what they're doing to concentrate on the music. That track quickly disintegrates into an unremarkable disco engagement that is, unfortunately, typical of Gaynor's material. She is really too good a singer to accept being essentially an accompanist to a thumpy rhythm section. There's more than a little irony in Strive, a track in which Gaynor sings about the need for everyone to take on new challenges while she plods along on an LP that is less than enterprising. (Silver Blue)
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