Customer Reviews

Living Without Your Love

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"It Begins Again (IBA)" and "Living Without Your Love (LWYL) marked Dusty's comeback in the late 70s on the United Artiste label in America. In my opinion, LWYL is the better album. The material is more consistent, less patchy. After IBA's lukewarm reception, Dusty wanted to move on to a more lightweight R & B sound for her follow up. Dusty's vocal performances - her phrasing in particular - on the soft soul ballads "Be Somebody", "You Can Do It", "Closet Man", "Get Yourself To Love", "I Just Fall In Love Again", "Dream On" and "I'm Coming Home Again" are magical and as good as some of the best things she has ever done, only that producer David Wolfert's bland production values didn't quite do justice to or showcase it to its best advantage. The two disco flavoured tracks (especially "Save Me, Save Me") are also fine for music of its kind. Only on "You Really Got A Hold On Me" does Wolfert really cramp Dusty's style with a horribly mechanical and leaden production, rendering it among the least inspired songs she has cut in her entire career. So, to Dusty fans who aren't familiar with LWYL and are discouraged by memories of negative reviews (particularly in the UK where fans are used to a stronger and more distinctive Dusty), I'd say please buy yourself a copy and make up your own mind. There are some wonderful things in there. It may not be among Dusty's best work but it's to my mind still of great enduring quality.

This was Dusty Springfield's second attempt at crossing over into the US. Unfortunately it was met with mediocre success. Vocally she is at no fault on this CD, sounding wonderful as usual with her golden voice. The fault lies a bit with the production and song selection. Highlights include the title track, "Save Me, Save Me", "I'm Coming Home Again" and "I Just Fall In Love Again". It's not as bad as everyone remembers, it might not have been her most successful but it still warrents a listen.

Nobody can deny that Dusty Springfield was perhaps one of the most gifted female pop vocalists of the later half of the 20th century. Her voice, unique, yet familiar, haunting, yet comforting. In the 60s she seemed to be the perfect amalgam of a decade rife with contradictions. She was the "it" girl for the British Mod scene successfully translating the American R&B and Motown sounds for her British compatriots, and yet also incredibly comfortable working with mature American Brill Building composers like Burt Bacharach and Carole King.

But once the 60s were over, and she moved to California, Dusty had trouble finding herself. After a 4 year hiatus ('74-'78) and a failed (at least commercially) comeback with IT BEGINS AGAIN in '78 (a much superior album than this one, by the way), Dusty tried once more to hit the charts with this '79 follow-up.

I wish I could say this was a fantastic album, in the tradition of Dusty's work on DUSTY IN MEMPHIS, but it is not. The fault lies mainly with the material and somewhat with the production.

But as always, Dusty's voice and interpretation is definitely not to blame for this miss. She sounds perfectly wonderful on cuts like "I'm Coming Home Again" (the most hearfelt performance), "I Just Fall In Love Again" (a big hit for Anne Murray),the title track (exquisitely phrased) and the Bee Gees penned "Save Me, Save Me".

But a lot of the album is bogged down in soggy production and sappy material, that even Dusty's reknown vocal abilities are not able to bring up to a higher standard. Her cover of Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got A Hold On Me", is beautifully sung, but the tempo drags, sapping it of all feeling. In "You Can Do It" and "Be Somebody" you can practically hear Dusty trying to lift up the maudlin material with her voice. "Get Yourself To Love" has a stunning opening, with just Dusty and a piano, but it quickly veers off course when the song takes a turn that is just a bit too MOR. Where Dusty previously had succeeded in making sappy work sublime, here she fails, mostly due to a double whammy of mediocre material and uninspired production.

It's not a terrible album by any means, but it just isn't what one expects from someone as talented as Dusty Springfield.

Luckily, the 80s (and the Pet Shop Boys) would bring a wonderful and long overdue phoenix-like resurgence for the White Queen of Soul.

This album is strictly for Dusty fans and completists. I wouldn't recommend it for someone just entering the fantastic yet complex world of Dusty Springfield. Still, I'm glad it's finally seeing the light of day on CD.

I got this album when I first moved to Seattle, and I have to say... I liked it but only for certain songs. Most of the material on here is somewhat over-produced and lacks much to do with Dusty's always-amazing vocal skills. The songs that do it for me are 'Closet Man,' which - if released as a single - could have been a No.1 hit. The others that are good are the Fleetwood Mac-styled 'Dream On,' and two others: an Anne Murray hit 'I Just Fall in Love Again' which Dusty could have gotten to No.1, provided Murray hadn't covered and released her version first, and Dusty's well-regarded comeback song 'I'm Coming Home Again.' All in all, an okay album.

I never thought I'd see the day when I've give any Dusty Springfield offering less than 4 stars. Well, this is that day.

While one can rarely fault Dusty's vocal talents on any song, in the case of "Living Without Your Love", those talents are totally wasted on this inferior material and shoddy production.

Most of the songs sound like demos which I threw out rather than be embarassed by. However, the writers of these songs have no shame. If you could find a worse song penned by Barry Gibb than "Save Me, Save Me", you'd have to rummage through his rubbish cans. This entire album drags on and on - there is no life in it. I realize Dusty was going through some awful personal problems back then; but, someone/anyone around her should have sat her down and told her not to bother recording this third-rate material.

The fact that the record company stuck her with an apprentice producer is most glaring. After Wexler and Dowd managed to produce Dusty's masterpiece "Dusty In Memphis" ten years earlier than this album, there really was no place to go but down until the Pet Shop Boys came along and rescued one of the 20th Century's greatest pop singers.

The real tragedy that was Dusty Springfield is on us in that we can only imagine what wonderful work she would have done had she been handled properly during those lean years between '69 and '87. We'll never know; and, that makes her premature death all the more tragic.

If you're new to Dusty's work, forget this album; and, do yourself the favour of buying "Dusty In Memphis" and/or "A Very Fine Love". All this reviewer can say is: Dusty should have spent more time in the great state of Tennessee. She did her best work there.

Dusty Springfield quickly followed up on her 1978 comeback album, IT BEGINS AGAIN, with LIVING WITHOUT YOUR LOVE. Unfortunately, it fared worse commercially than its predecessor. The album was barely promoted, and Dusty's label, United Artists was bought out shortly thereafter.

However, while IT BEGINS AGAIN was an ambitious (if not altogether successful) project that is remembered favorably, LIVING WITHOUT YOUR LOVE is a decidely lesser effort, lacking in focus or panache. While the main criticism of IBA is usually that it is overproduced, LWYL, with novice producer David Wolfert at the helm, seems lacking in that same area. The songs vary greatly in quality (both in the writing and in the execution), and as a result, the album as a whole comes across as uninspired. Dusty herself later referred to it as "unstunning".

The album kicks off with a cover of Smokey Robinson's "You Got Really Got a Hold on Me", which is pleasant (and features a decent vocal from Dusty) but suffers the same problem that plagued the sole Motown cover from her last album ("A Love Like Yours")- the production is too polished; not enough grit.

the second song, "You Can Do It" is another pleasant number, a midtempo, light R&B entry which features a notable horn arrangement, but seems to be lacking something, mainly in the chorus. The next song is Melissa Manchester's "Be Somebody", a slower bit of AC which is one of the better entries on the album, with Dusty delivering a compelling performance.

"Closet Man" is probably the most interesting song here- not so much because of the curious lyric (co-written by David Foster!) of a woman encouraging her secretly-gay friend to "come out into the light", but because of an irresistable arrangement, resplendent with jazzy nuances and heavy shades of the Quiet Storm sound that ruled late-night R&B radio at the time (compare the production on this with another blue-eyed soul classic, Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do For Love").

The title track is in the middle of the album (it closed out side 1 on vinyl), and it's another album highlight- nothing particularly brilliant, but definitely a commercial number, uptempo and catchy, and Dusty glides along with the chorus. It would've fit comfortably alongside other light R&B/disco/AC hybrids that were ruling the airwaves at the time.

The second half of the album takes a nosedive, with "Save Me, Save Me" leading things off. If nothing else, you can usually expect a nice melody- or a bit of clever wordplay- from a Barry Gibb/Albhy Galuten composition, but there's none of that here. It's a disco number that fails to be energetic or memorable, with Dusty sounding uneasy at times. Honestly, it's a lousy song.

Things get pretty sleepy from here on. "Get Yourself to Love" starts out nicely, then stumbles into a dreary psuedo-gospel mess. "I Just Fall in Love Again"- a huge hit less than a year later for Anne Murray- suffers from another pleasant-but-bland production. The song is also done in an odd-key, higher than Murray's version, which would've been perfect for Dusty's husky tones. "Dream On" is an innocuous Carole Bayer Sager trifle, but can be a bit irritating at times.

The closing song, "I'm Coming Home Again" (another Bayer Sager composition, and the leadoff single in Dusty's native UK) is a big improvement, even if it's too plodding for commercial consideration as a single. Dusty is touching on the track, but too much of the preceding selections have been forgettable for this number to salvage the album.

As for Dusty herself, she has some great vocal moments throughout but, saddled with second rate material too often, even she can't rescue some of this stuff.

After this album died a dismal death, Dusty stammered a bit, landing on Casablanca in 1982 with WHITE HEAT, another commercial disappointment, but a MUCH more exciting, compelling album than this.


It's not terrible, but aside from a couple of truly great highlights, there's not enough in LIVING WITHOUT YOUR LOVE to make it a must-listen.


(PS- I would've given this album 1 or 2 stars, had a lesser vocalist than Dusty been on it)