Not bad, but...
ShiroiHikari | Oklahoma, USA | 10/04/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"I'm among the minority that finds this album disappointing. It's definitely not terrible. However, Karen's vocal is drowned in echo on almost all of the tracks and gets lost in the overproduced sound of the music, and many of the songs sound a little uninspired. To me, that's a shame.
In my opinion, there are two highlights on this album, and one of them is Your Baby Doesn't Love You Anymore. It starts off with a bassline not unlike the the opening of Superstar, and Karen's vocal is smooth, and in the chorus, she takes off and soars over the song. Also, there are some nice backing vocals on this track-- it's too bad Richard didn't use this style on some of the other tracks rather than the choir.
The other highlight is Ordinary Fool. Karen's voice absolutely sparkles here. I really wish Richard would have went with a plain old piano instead of that keyboard, strings, and flute in the intro, but that's just a nitpick-- after that, it transitions into a jazzy arrangement that's really quite nice. This song definitely should have been included on an earlier album, as was originally intended.
Alright, I know I'll catch some flak for this one, but I cannot stand the corn-syrupy version of Make Believe It's Your First Time found here. Don't get me wrong, I respect Richard, but I wish he could have learned that sometimes less is more, and that he doesn't need to heavily sugar over every damn song. Not to mention that Karen's reading here is not as nice as it was on her solo effort. I don't fault her for it. Can you imagine putting your heart into a recording, being told it's "unreleasable", and then being asked to re-record it? It just seems a little bit disrespectful that in the wake of her tragic death, Richard released this "revised" version rather than her original cut of the song. (But that has since been remedied.)
Now is a beautiful song, but I have a hard time listening to it because Karen sounds like she's in pain to me. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. I have the same problem with Two Lives. Maybe Voice of the Heart is a much more apt title for this record than I originally thought."