L.A Times: two stars...

[foxmonkey]

From stamplet's journal.



From the 2/29/04 Sunday edition
More Slippery Than Smooth

JC Chasez
Schizophrenic
2 stars (out of 4) = fair

Maybe the title is supposed to explain the daffy stylistic jumps contained in the solo debut album from the second 'N Sync member to break out from the pack. Chasez is like a kid racing a car without a steering wheel through the pop landscape, and his unpredictability makes Justin Timberlake's "Justified" seem narrow and stodgy.

But it would take more than a diagnostic title to give this sampler of pop confections any coherence or concentrated effect. By the end, you don't feel you've gotten to know someone, beyond the slick hedonist who struts from most of the songs. Ultimately, all his genre-grazing makes him seem slippery rather than adventurous.

He's at his best when the setting is light and simple and his singing direct and natural. More often he's swamped by the concepts, and the album rises and falls on the listener's tolerance for the superficial, synthetic pleasures of contemporary pop craftsmanship.

Chasez starts off like a Michael Jackson (circa "Off the Wall") acolyte with "Some Girls (Dance With Women)", a Maxim magazine-level nightclub fantasy that's packed with melodic and production hooks. Then it's off into that array of retro R&B, electro-reggae, synth-heavy new wave, slick corporate rock, teen-pop balladry...

Ultimately, Prince emerges as the album's presiding spirit, with Chasez spinning into falsetto passages and airing sexual scenarios with more graphic detail than anyone needs. If people thought Timberlake was trouble, this guy isn't going to get anywhere close to Super Bowl XXXIX.

Richard Cromelin

Comments

[scot-ty.livejournal.com]

I'm just thinking about the pictures. If Prince has any kind of party after the show, I hope JC can wangle an invitation and do some schmoozing. Those pictures would be priceless.