The Trouble With Success or How You Fit into the World

The Trouble With Success or How You Fit into the World Artist: Paula Kelley
Label: Kimchee Records
Category: Music


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


UPC: 723724599024
EAN: 0723724599024
ASIN: B0000C0FL6


Release Date: 2003-09-16

The Trouble With Success or How You Fit into the World


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Tracks:

  1. My Finest Hour (Enter)
  2. A New Time
  3. Could There Be Another World
  4. The Girlfriend
  5. How Many Times
  6. My Finest Hour
  7. The Rest Of You
  8. I'd Fall In Love With Anyone
  9. Night Racer
  10. September Eyes
  11. Friday Came
  12. Where Do You Go
  13. My Finest Hour (Exit)

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  1. Nothing/Everything
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Album Description

With The Trouble with Success or How You Fit into the World, Paula Kelley has created something unmatched in beauty and pop smarts. This is the baroque masterpiece that suggests everything she's done before was but the apprenticeship. Enhanced by a veritable army of 38 musicians, The Trouble With Success boasts a brilliant array of instrumental hues lavished upon songs as irresistible as anything a pop hook connoisseur might pine for in these post-rock times. Throughout Paula proves herself a virtual sorceress when it comes to putting an intoxicating spin on an arrangement. <P>You might find elements of The Left Banke, Burt Bacharach, and The Divine Comedy in her mix, as well as hints of The Cardigans, Todd Rundgren, Ennio Morricone and Dusty Springfield in places...and don't forget Love, Tahiti 80, Cardinal, and The Bee Gees. But to emphasize the obvious, it's really all Paula's vision, with the indispensable assistance of the rest of her five-piece band and numerous other players, including Eric Matthews (known for his own albums on Sub Pop) on flugelhorn and trumpet. And in "I'd Fall in Love With Anyone" you get the full orchestra, complete with woodwind, brass, and string sections for a sound rarely attempted in the realm of indie pop. Paula Kelley has truly arrived at that place where popular music attains the sublime.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars Delightful pop album with orchestral flourishes.......2004-04-01

Paula Kelley's album is a breezy pop delight, with catchy choruses and excellent arrangements that use orchestral strings, choir voices, and trumpets. Kelley's voice is a wispy, child-like coo that somehow manages to be surprisingly expressive. Still, it's the arrangements that push the album over the top. The best song, "Could There Be Another World" sounds like a long-lost Electic Light Orchestra track, while the orchestral arrangements on "I'd Fall in Love with Anyone" and the ending of "The Rest of You" are pure Bacharach. Kelley plays rhythm guitar and keyboards; most of her keyboard parts sound like the piano part on "I Am the Walrus", and "Could There Be Another World" uses keyboard flutes right out of "Strawberry Fields Forever".

The lyrics are mostly vague, though the pretty ballad "Night Racer" uses a nice metaphor of a bumper car rink to describe the troubled thoughts keeping someone up at night. Several of the best songs have non sequitur choruses whose lyrics don't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the song: "Could There Be Another World", "I'd Fall in Love with Anyone", and especially "The Girlfriend", with it's nebulous chorus "Write about the simple way that I don't." "Friday Came", which has been lodged in my head the last couple of weeks, centers on a repeated line of "Throw your body down into the air". Another fine song is "My Finest Hour"; the closing riff from this song is used at both the start and end of the album.

(1=poor 2=mediocre 3=pretty good 4=very good 5=phenomenal)

5 out of 5 stars

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  6. Stew ~ Wide Mouth Mason
  7. Clemenza
  8. Live in Concert ~ Wishbone Ash
  9. Recycled ~ Nektar
  10. Let's Take a Sea Cruise ~ Frankie Ford

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