Toronto Eye weekly and The Santa Barbara Independent Reviews

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http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_11.2 ... prock.html

Toronto Eye Weekly
November 24, 2005


Holiday Record Guide
Pop/Rock

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BURT BACHARACH
At This Time Columbia/SonyBMG

The king of easy-listening schmaltz can still write a mean arrangement, but with or without loops from Dr. Dre, he's still schmaltzy as hell. Even if you can get past Bacharach's embrace of production values that are as slick as an Alaskan oil spill, it's hard to endorse his melancholy, evocative melodies when they're accompanied by self-penned lyrics that would make Scott Stapp cringe ("Who'll stop the violence 'cause it's out of control? / Make 'em stop!"). Only the silky bossa nova of "Can't Give It Up" recalls his past glories. The rest is pure smooth jazz. Make him stop. DM

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http://www.independent.com/a&e/poprockjazz992.htm
pop, rock & jazz

The Santa Barbara Independent

REVIEW - FRINGE BEAT - STATE -
SOUND & FURY

PRJ Reviews

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fringe beat

Holiday Greetings & Grousings
by Josef Woodard


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SEMI-GUILTY PLEASURE DEPT.: Burt Bacharach-one of the handful of great pop songwriters alive at this moment-showed up at Music Academy of the West, in a benefit concert in June. He was the guy, trained by both Brill Building craft and also classical icon Darius Milhaud, who quite sneakily inserted sophistication into pop music, before the counterculture dumbed down the program and made it possible for people with a knowledge of five or six chords to top the hit parade. But that's another story.

The important story this season is that Bacharach's stellar new album, At This Time (Columbia), shows the 70-something artist still very much in the game, and putting artistry, adventure, and even global-social commentary high on his priority list. Guests include his former songwriting partner Elvis Costello ("Who Are These People") and fellow sophisto-pop tunesmith Rufus Wainwright ("Go Ask Shakespeare").

The songs themselves extend his elegant jazz-cum-pop vocab into the 21st century, while also showing new skill with lyrics. Bacharach's own soft, straining voice-as heard in the Music Academy show, in his epiphanic rendition of "Windows of the World" -is one of those limited-but-persuasive "songwriter voices" (Irving Berlin's voice was also charmingly awful). But that humble voice, and the brain behind it, serves him well on At This Time.