I thought I was safe leaving off December for my end of year bests lists, but honestly, this album would’ve made it. It opens with a gathering of people singing, which momentarily put me off a little – it’s a great way to open an album, and you really do get the sense of a family gathering, the warmth and the love and the musical energy, but I wouldn’t want to listen to a whole album done like this. Thankfully, it goes on to touch everything that’s great about Christmas music – from folk to jazz, multilingual, pop, rock, you name it, they go there.

Kate and Anna, the Wainwrights – Loudon, Rufus and Martha – all make themselves known from the faintest sound of their voice in the concord to their solos. They’re not just singing, they really put their heart and soul and identity into the songs. Rufus Wainwright contributes more than I expected – he has two solos and he can frequently be heard in the background. I love Martha’s main song too, and that’s kinda saying something since Martha is still growing on me really. This may be my favourite Christmas album since the St. Winifred’s Choir’s “Christmas for Everyone” pretty much defined the season for me.

I love Tiffany. I think she has to have been my first ever crush because I remember having a crush on her right around, of course, the time of “I Think We’re Alone Now”. That would make me, um, 6, I think – though perhaps it was still floating around the charts in the UK a couple of years later when I clearly remember (for some reason) telling a friend’s mum about my crush, lol, to which her reply was, of course, little old for you? How things change :-p

Anyway, I don’t know why, I felt like throwing that in by way of introduction. This CD is an old album that was only released in South East Asia and is now re-released including a bunch of extra tracks, demos, and nice liner notes by the producer about his memories of recording with Tiffany ‘in the beginning’ (I think mostly reproduced in full here where you can also buy).

If your love of Tiffany is limited entirely to the one hit song, then this probably isn’t for you. It’s the full assault of every kind of 80s music abomination, think Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s spoof songs in Team America. But you know what, I love that kind of thing in small Tiffany-shaped doses, lol. It really is incredible how powerful her voice was at this time – I’d personally say she sounds better now, especially on “The Color of Silence”, but really what I mean is, she sounds different now … she actually did sound as good in her teens as she does now aged 34, her voice has merely changed with the times.

It’s slightly pushing it to give this album 4 stars, but the highs of it are so high that I personally can’t give it any less. It opens fantastically with a double whammy of “Please Explain,” and “Where Did It Go?” both sung by Bacharach himself, audibly close to tears on the second of them. After the first of many mostly instrumentals (more on these in a sec), Elvis Costello sings the album’s third wonder “Who Are These People?” which is my current favourite after three or four listens. These songs are heavy-handed, to say the least – this is, as you may have read, Bacharach’s first foray into lyric-writing and his words are the simplest and most direct you’ll find. It might work for you, it might not – it did for me.

Later in the album are other high points, like “Go Ask Shakespeare,” a song truly made for its singer Rufus Wainwright, and the words that close the album, sung again by Elvis Costello (I think).

But the rest is unfortunately filled with, well, filler – very samey and mostly instrumental jazz, too close to the ‘elevator music’ cliché that probably springs to mind when most people hear the name Bacharach. It’s sort of a letdown. But those first three songs and the Wainwright number between them nearly had me in tears, they’re classics.

Like I need any more evidence that I’m really just a tweenage girl stuck in the wrong body, this CD comes out of nowhere and clears away any doubt that remained because I love it, lol. Anyone who loves the pseudo-angsty poprock of Avril Lavigne, Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff and Ashlee Simpson-a-likes will adore this bunch of songs which kind of serve as a summary of this whole tacky, fast food style of music. It’s a little more packed than usual with the kind of messages which you find in Disney straight-to-video movies etc – “It’s not about the clothes that you wear / It’s not about the car, I swear / It’s all about you …” etc – but hey, it works for me. I may just have to buy the DVD too :p ... and the dolls … and ooh the car and the bag and styling head and game and …

I’ve said it time and time again, that I hate dance music. And yet, I seem to like an awful lot of dance music these days. Lolly, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Geri Halliwell, Madonna, Gwen Stefani … I guess what I’m really trying to say when I say I hate dance music is that I hate most of it … or to be more general, that I hate bad music, or to be even more general, that I hate music that isn’t musical. Which I guess goes without saying.

Tiffany’s last album really blew me away, but this is worlds away from the acoustic angsty stuff of “The Color of Silence”. To me personally, this album is what would happen if Lolly recorded a new album in a few years time. It’s very Lolly-ish … but a lot more mature, lyrically and musically.

Having said about not minding the dance nature of “Dust off and Dance,” I wanna say, I’d love to hear other versions of these songs. They’re not the usual simple repetitive patterns you get laid over a single pounding kick drum. “Artificial Girlfriend,” for example, has a major 60s vibe to it, I can imagine it being done with a “Bangles” type approach.

The star of the show for most people, including me, will be the new version of “I Think We’re Alone Now,” Tiffany’s biggest hit way back in the Eighties – this song has been remixed before, and I wanted to slaughter the perpitrators … but give it to the girl who originally made the song so beautiful, like what, 20 years after it was a hit? And it’s still cheesy-ass dance remix stuff … but it rocks. That this track doesn’t look to be appearing in any pop charts anytime soon (‘normal’ people probably think Tiffany is either dead or homeless, reminds me of when I told some relatives I saw Vanessa Paradis in concert in 2001 – “what is she still alive??”) is a crime, this is the track of the summer (for little old me, at least).

By some miracle I got up and pulled on some clothes and ran downstairs in time to catch the delivery man who needed a signature (that’ll teach me to pick express delivery :-P) for my Raphael CD which is now here

It’s pretty short – 34 minutes (makes me more comfortable with my own CD lol which is shaping up to be pretty much the exact same length). The DVD features the recording sessions and is pretty cool – even some English being spoken on it lol, I think one of the guitarists is American and a bassist is British. The CD has an enhanced section but I can’t get it to work yet, it just gives me a full screen album cover and then dies.

The whole CD’s a lot lighter than the first two. Well… the music is… haven’t really studied the lyrics yet, they might be in ironic counterpoint to the music or something, I don’t know. Theres lots of banjo and harmonica and everything has a pretty driving beat (no musing lost pianos etc) and lots “doo-doo” – ing and whistling for us not fluent in French Favourite song so far – “Les petits bateaux” is just beautiful, conjures up an instant image of a romantic summer’s day (I don’t even care if that’s not what it’s about – it just makes me think of me and Sarah walking around Paris one day in some typical corny cinematic montage :P) The last track, “Funambule”, is a total wonderful homage to Bowie, you can hear it within like 2 notes lol.

I’m just constantly amazed by how much this guy changes and grows. His first album and that first time I saw him, he was just a rock band. They were amazing songs and stuff, but very much commercial, almost more pop than rock. I would’ve never expected a song like “1900” on “La Realité” or “la ballade de pauvre” (the only definitely sad song on “Caravane”) here to come out of him then. “La Réalite” was like ‘woah, artist’, and this one is even more that way. He’s so free about what he does, you never know what the next song’s gonna sound like, that’s why I like him so much.

New Raphael, new Fiona Apple, and new Aimee Mann within a week of each other lol. Welcome to my heaven

Of course I’m never fully satisfied – Violet is out on DVD here today Must go to supermarket…..

I think I’ve had my own ghostly figure floating about not wanting me to write about this thing, earlier today I lost my second half-written review. Let’s see if third time’s a charm.

I listened to this CD (the full cast recording, 2 discs packed full at over 70 minutes each, recorded on the opening night) on Christmas Day and my first reaction was, love the main theme, don’t follow the story, sounds a lot like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s other stuff, a few other cool moments.

Then came the week after. One by one, song by song, it came back to me, then flooded back to me. I think I know this whole show by heart almost after only two full listens. I can even play half of it by ear (or is that memory) on the piano. I can only guess that it’s so well structured by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the themes so well stated and repeated that it all logically fits together and is so easy to remember.

On the second listen I was able to follow the story completely, basically a mystery that becomes a murder mystery without the murder you thought, with the crucial element of a love story that all musicals need. I don’t know what’s in the novel so I can’t compare; though it’s on my ‘want to read’ list (hah! you can download it here!), and the other film and TV adaptations are on my ‘want to watch’ list too. This is certainly a great batch of characters: from the clean slate hero Walter Hartright, the one character with no true ties to the main story; the sisters Marian and Laura; the dastardly Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde; and the eponymous Woman in White, Anne Catherick.

This is definitely a musical I’d love to see onstage. I read that the staging is as spectacular as the story and music. In the meantime I’ll be humming “I Believe My Heart,” “Trying Not to Notice Him,” “All for Laura,” “You Can Get Away With Anything,” “Lammastide,” “I Hope You Like It Here”... well, the whole thing… till I go crazy myself.