Tempting: Jenny Toomey Sings the Songs of Franklin Bruno

Tempting: Jenny Toomey Sings the Songs of Franklin Bruno Artist: Jenny Toomey
Label: Misra Records
Category: Music


Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1


UPC: 656605501628
EAN: 0656605501628
ASIN: B00006JNGH


Release Date: 2002-10-01

Tempting: Jenny Toomey Sings the Songs of Franklin Bruno


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Tracks:

  1. Your Inarticulate Boyfriend
  2. Decoy
  3. Cheat
  4. Empty Sentiment
  5. Just Because It's Dying
  6. Masonic Eye
  7. Tempting
  8. Pointless Triangle
  9. Unionbusting
  10. Let's Stay In
  11. Only a Monster
  12. Every Little Bit Hurts

Similar Items:

  1. Antidote

Amazon.com

If indie rock has a class president, it's lovely, well-heeled, and politically active singer-songwriter Jenny Toomey, who preaches the D.I.Y ethic with more savvy than Ian MacKaye and Calvin Johnson combined. On <I>Tempting</I>, the carrot-topped chanteuse gets a cast of tasteful, wide-ranging musicians (including Joey Burns and John Convertino from Calexico) together to tackle 12 songs by über-witty Nothing Painted Blue frontman Franklin Bruno. Like Richard Davies, Joe Pernice, John Darnielle and Stephin Merritt, Bruno crafts catchy songs that blend a misanthropic and ironic world view with borderline sappy emotions. This lounge-flavored alterna-tribute is relentlessly strong. Toomey has turned into a spectacular torch singer; her muscular voice demonstrates Olympic grace throughout, but it really shines on the string-driven "Empty Sentiment." Unabashedly wordy and witty, <I>Tempting</I> is the ideal accompaniment to a lazy Sunday spent figuring out the <I>New York Times</I> crossword puzzle. <I>--Mike McGonigal</I>

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars a Zen Tone review.......2003-04-16

Any one person who has followed Frank's songwriting for the past 11-12 years should know that this is by far his finest hour
of compositional equanimity. Jenny Toomey has an album under her belt that the best of us wish we had written, much less recorded.
With a Kitty Wells lounge attack, backed by a phat, raw, mancini-like production...
Well, if you don't by this album, you just ...
Kiss without makeup is top notch, but this album is the annals of one of the great Inland Empire sinner-songwriters.
I'am making sure Patrick Brayer hears of it any-hoo.
Toomey nailed the masonic eye. Cheat & Unionbusting get one big " DANG !"
Not one bad cut. First time in a long while I listened to an album straight through twice.
Besides, Frank also seconds as a great philosophy teacher.
You will learn something here.

3 out of 5 stars Has no melodies to speak of.......2003-02-04

Great lyrics, great voice, but where's the memorable melodies? Every lyric here is let down by the uninspired tune that accompanies it. Bruno is obviously under the spell of Cole Porter, but he has forgotten that Porter wrote great tunes as well as great lyrics. The best melodic effort here would be the swinging, Let's Stay In, but it is itself a slightly hollow pastiche of the better male-female duets of the fifties. The difference between Bruno and Stephen Merritt, to whom he has been compared, is that Merritt can write great tunes, whereas Bruno can only write great lyrics. One would be pushed to find a decent hook in this collection of songs. Everything else is there, but the hook is vital. Porter understood that better than anybody. As for Jenny, she should be tackling the standards, not these pale imitations. She has the most stylish voice in contemporary music. It deserves to be wrapped round the classics, but whether it ever will or not is another matter. Her own album of songs, Antidote, is a better buy than this one, but until we get Jenny Sings The Gershwin Songbook, or something of that ilk, her great vocal gift is being squandered.

5 out of 5 stars

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