Eat The Music: Preliminary Impressions

[Suspended In Duct Tape <METH@delphi.com>]

Hi!

After checking in with Love-Hounds yesterday evening and discovering that
"Eat The Music" had been made available, I rushed downtown before the stores
closed and grabbed me the last (only?) copy in the local Sam Goody.

What follows are my first impressions:

     - What the hell is this?
     - I'd hoped it would be better in hi-fi than it was over the phone.
     - Oh Kate, oh Kate, why hast thou forsaken us?

Now for my current impressions, after five or six listens:

     -"Eat The Music" is marginally pissingly annoying.  I can't STAND 
anything with a Latin beat or anything hinting at one (yes, I know that's
my problem), so this one was treading on thin ice to begin with.  It's also
about two and a half minutes too long.  But the lyrics are interesting and
very Kate, and I like the drum loops in the percussion, even though at times
it's hard to tell if it's really funky things going on with tape manipulation
and not Del's engineering.  I sincerely hope it's the former.

     -The extended mix is seven and a half minutes too long.

     -"Big Stripey Lie" is *way* cool.  I've got it on endless repeat as I
type this- the lyrics are rather cheezy, but I really really like what's
going on in there musically.  I do wish she weren't sounding quite so much
like Cyndi Lauper, though.

     -"Candle In The Wind"- I've known since "Rocket Man" came out that this
one blows chunks, and time has not bettered my opinion of it at all.  It's
made all the worse by the fact that it follows "Big Stripey Lie", which has
an Ending, and should be followed by nothing.

So there you have it.  I'm still looking forward to the album (who wouldn't
be?), but I am more convinced than ever that Kate's best work is behind her,
and it's futile to expect anything to match the brilliance of _The Dreaming_,
which I think I'll go listen to right now.

(And listen, you silly people, all of the above is my OPINION.  Gawd.)

Meredith
meth@delphi.com