Customer Reviews

Waiting in Vain

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

 

 

A record you can listen to to suit your own style and or mood; even changing for myself day to day. Has anyone ever used the word "customizable" to describe a cd. I hear a lot of the early solo efforts of John Lennon in this great record. The lyrics are personal, intellegent and approachable. The music is light and heavy at the same time. The feel is distinct and vague at the same time. It has Lennon's precise cynical flavor, and also like Lennon it is almost done tongue in cheek. I don't want to use the overused phrase refreshing here, but someone has taken my thesauraus. But "Waiting In Vain is truly refreshing.

Waiting in Vain (2008, Rykodisc) James Jackson Toth's first studio album. ***

As with so many other albums, it would have been so much better had some of the excess been cut off. It starts off wonderfully, with the easy-listening of "Nothing Hides" and "Doreen," moving straight into the album's pinnacle, the slow and comforting "Look in on Me." Surely the accents he adds occassionally are unwarranted, but Toth's wide array of veritable influences (Mick Jagger, what?!) are interesting to listen to. But the sheer length of the album mixed with some lazy production pull Waiting in Vain down from the heighth it should have achieved.