DONNA SUMMER: Endless Summer (Casablanca)
DONNA SUMMER’S fourth greatest-hits package, no less, contains little that wasn’t on the first three, but it does serve to remind why she was the undisputed queen of what was once called disco. Her voice was enormous, and was never better than when she dropped it to a Barry White-like pant on the likes of Love to Love You, Baby. All of Summer’s many hits since 1975 are here, in their throbbing, synth-laden glory. And glory is the word. Her original producer, legendary disco nabob Giorgio Moroder, pulled out all the stops, never using one violin where a couple of orchestras would do. The consequent lushness of the early stuff contrasts sharply with the cheap but likeable flimsiness of her later work (eg This Time I Know It’s for Real) with Stock Aitken & Waterman. The hits are bookended by two new songs, one a ballad of rare pomposity that doesn’t deserve a place amid such splendour.
TOM JONES:
The Lead and How to Swing It (ZTT)
CAN you believe it — the old boy’s new single, If I Only Knew, is his best in decades. Someone had the bright idea of taking a heaving dance groove and telling Jones to let rip over it in his most hairy-chested fashion. It’s thrilling, even when, temporarily crazed, he begins rapping. (Sadly, that’s our only glimpse of Snoop Doggy Jones; he sticks to singing on the other 10 tracks.) Elsewhere on the album, Jones mates his bombastic vocal with several other dance styles — electro-pop on Situation, HiNRG on Love is on Our Side — with generally favourable results. A disc worth purchasing, if only for the cover photo where Tom looks like he’s stubbed his toe.
M PEOPLE: Bizarre Fruit (deConstruction)
WHAT a puzzling title (derived from Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, presumably) for such a gilded follow-up to the Mercury Prize-winning Elegant Slumming. Now three albums old, M People have their populist dance music honed to perfection, the result being a certain complacency to their hi-gloss house grooves. Diva-in-waiting Heather Small can be rather earnest when working a song over; she’s best when backed by gospel-esque singers (as she is on Precious Pearl and Love Rendezvous), who create a lush, regal ambience. What suits the People best of all, though, is blasting-trumpet funk such as Sugar Town — the brightest spot on a record which is dedicated to a rather sober study of the nature of love.
FRANK SINATRA: Duets II (Capitol)
A FOLLOW-UP to last year’s project, where the man sang with a host of unlikely pop-scene partners. The cast list this time is less novel — Chrissie Hynde and Willie Nelson excepted, most of this bunch are middle-aged, well-groomed and not apt to shake things up. That said, Patti Labelle, Linda Ronstadt and even Frankie Jr make good, sassy jobs of Bewitched, Moonlight in Vermont and My Kind of Town. But the real plaudits belong to Quite Old Blue Eyes himself, whose verve-ometer has been cranked up a few notches since Duets I.