Idly wandering through an abandoned apartment, an attractive girl with cat’s-eye glasses sings of loves neglected and lost. As the camera shifts from room to room, an artistic glimpse of loneliness envelopes the viewer. This familiar scene from Lisa Loeb’s incredibly successful 1994 video “Stay (I Miss You),” from the Reality Bites soundtrack, was her breakthrough into mainstream music success and was the first No. 1 hit from an artist who hadn’t had a full-length album. Following this success, Loeb and her band, Nine Stories, released the successful 1995 album “Tails,” containing trademark plaintive melodies such as “Do You Sleep,” “Alone,” and “Stay.” Since then, Loeb has toured with her band and performed with Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, the Indigo Girls, Buffalo Tom, Sarah McLachlan, Counting Crows and on the Lilith Fair Tour. With the success of “Tails” and of her tours, Loeb returned to the studio to release her newest album “Firecracker” in late 1997. Sounding sadly like “Tails,” “Firecracker” contains all of Loeb’s characteristic traits — soft guitar, mid-range vocals, slow tempos and lyrics sounding much like the diary of a junior high girl. That’s not to say that “Firecracker” is all bad. The music is definitely relaxing, the lyrics do seem to have real emotion in them and the instrumentals are very well done. “Firecracker” is a good album, for what it is. The sad thing is, it isn’t much. One or two of these dispirited love songs wouldn’t be an offensively bad addition to a more varied album. But “Firecracker” is nothing more than 12 songs at nearly the same tempo and with similar lyrics, all in the theme of love or the loss of love. Nothing on the CD changes from this fluffy musical norm. The transition between “Falling in Love,” an epic story of a promiscuous woman falling in love with the wrong man and “Truthfully,” a song about falling in love against your will, is not even noticeable. The only way to tell that the song has changed at all is to follow the lyric sheet or to see the number on the CD player change from “2” to “3.” Monotony is not an admirable trait in music and Loeb’s newest attempt is definitely monotonous. She has the talent and musical ability to make this light type of song work into a more varied album. However, without a divergent element, “Firecracker” is a musically disappointing album. Her previous work’s fans, such as the teeny-boppers who ran out to buy cat’s-eye glasses after seeing the “Stay” video, will probably love this disc. Those looking for more than just the same old sound needn’t rush out to buy this album. Candy-cane sweet, sentimental drivel with pop music backing just gets annoying after an hour. |
