Birds With Broken Wings

olleen Lovett's obscure sole LP, recorded in 1974, is a real oddity. Though it might be more properly classified as a singer/songwriter album than anything else, it's certainly not as indebted to rock as most mid-'70s records from that genre, with a backing that owes more to mildly funky soft soul. The record seems to trace the cycle of an affair and its demise, yet with a near softcore romanticism that makes it as much as a soundtrack to a make-out session as a confessional outpouring. There's a touch of easy listening orchestration to the arrangements, yet Lovett's lyrics, and her delivery, make explicit the longing for physical closeness that standard easy listening records only hint at. The use of some maudlin spoken passages adds to the strange mixture of come-on and self-pitying sorrow. Lovett is an OK singer, but not a great one, and there's the sense that she's trying a little too hard to make the record (and herself) more sexy and alluring than she really is, as a vocalist at any rate. The mushy sentiments can get over the top and faintly ridiculous, especially as for all their titillation, the words and vocals are only borderline R-rated at most. It's not a record that sounds like much else from its time, however -- even though many of its elements are much of their time -- which makes it a fairly interesting curiosity. [Some reissues add two equally strange bonus tracks from a rare 1966 single, with "Freckle-Faced Soldier" being a mariachi-flavored pop/rock lament for a sweetheart killed in Vietnam, and "Go-Go Girl" a generic mod-rocker about being...a go-go girl.] ~ Richie Unterberger|