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Perry and Bowman collaborated in song two, "Beautiful," which sets the scene for the playfully
constructed pop concertos to follow. "Beautiful" is a coloring book of sound that so carefully
ignores the strong sense of spirituality in which the CD ends and presents a youthful spin on
eternity. "My God, I fall for tricks as old as this," she sings as an aside and to herself, before
she declares to those less fortunately gifted with reality that the trees, the sun and the moon
are, simply, like everything else, beautiful.
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The derivative but decisive "Einstein And Sunshine" is delightfully puerile. McPherson's song
follows Adams' "Blow Wind Blow," and the jumping rock pieces pounce like boys would in light,
coltish motion on a hot August day. "Take me wherever you want me to go," Adams sings in the
latter, perhaps after hearing McPherson sing, "It doesn't take an Einstein to realize the sunshine
is better than rain." Duh.
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While the boys careen off the light edges of pulp pop, Perry strolls the sands of time, forlorn
beneath a summer sky filled with dead stars, wondering. "What's It Going To Be Like Now?" She
pauses from the word "like" to the word "now," as if she cannot connect with the moment, no less
how life will become with love lost. The boys, however, continue to believe everything is beautiful
and that is all they want to believe.
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Perry joins McPherson and Adams in their collaboration "Don't You Be Like That." The trio agrees
that the mood of the previous tune "is chilling, draped in black" but a change of mind, if not of
heart, is the obvious solution, so they chant, "Don't you be like that..." Certainly not "...now."
Then, McPherson shows some sweet femininity with a pretty poem and his string quartet (lovely
musical assistance by Danny Levin). "Jaded" plays with rhymes to dull us with its surfeit and
toss off the seriousness of a direct answer. POP 4's summer at this point is down to "who knows..."
so let's just have fun.
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"I'm So Jealous" finds Perry joining the boys in their immature theater of pulp, where it's all
right to lose a love or two to summer; in fact, it provokes this Shirley Temple-like dance tune.
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Then the gallery of tunes turns on a dime and summer shifts from playful to painful, if only in its
promise to end. That's why the next song is "Miserably Pursuing Happiness." Perry and Bowman sing
about the burden of consciously looking to be happy, making hope a burden.
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Meanwhile, McPherson is creating "pub pop" with his saloon-crooning "Julianne Irish." It's a drunken
harangue served at room temperature and sung tongue-in-cheek with an ending that decelerates to a
point where you realize it's the booze singing.
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Adams' "Straight To The Head" aptly follows in Nilssonesque persistence. It is apparent at this
point that POP4 summer has come of age, relating on a totally different level than it began and
changed into midway. The journey is less arty at this point; it is almost decidedly snide. "You're
No Aimee Mann" is long; it's a march into submission, ending with a wandering musical "Whatever,"
feel, like Aimee's own "sunny, surreal" songs.
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Adams' "Lover's Limbo" admits to be "numb and floating... is fine this time of year" and summer's
rite of passage means we "haven't got a clue and maybe it's just as well." Bowman resigns in
"You Love Me" that it ain't necessarily so. "You love me until you've got something better to do."
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McPherson then welcomes us all to a "Tour For The Brokenhearted" where we should "have respect for
the departed" and the heaven that defined everything is beautiful when POP4 summer started is
summer burning out. "If hell is a place then it's here." Oh, how summer's flames have turned
innocence into fragments of matter.
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This is an evergreen collection of sharp, clear music that displays the talents of a quartet whose
individual members represent a loss in the very value of the wonderful music they have created over
too many years of anonymity. Perry understands this and when the collection of arty musical
approaches results in her song, "Dust," we are left bereft of youth and its championship season.
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Listening to this CD any other season but summer is all right. It will just bring you right back to
an understanding that everything is beautiful and so is the dust. As an existential parable, POP4
summer assures us that beneath the rubble of the broken heart are the stuff of life that mattered
and may matter again.
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| Frank
Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme
Cotolo
Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address:
frank@148.ca.
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