November 23 - 30 , 1 9 9 5

**1/2 k.d. lang

Too proud to employ musical catch-phrases and too self-absorbed to speed up the beats, lang wants to sweet-talk her way through 10 nights of love, on her own terms - painful or hungry or terrified. Sometimes it works. The acquisitive glee of her monologue sweetens every undertone of "If I Were You," and in "Acquiesce," the stormy languor of her alto captures both her sense of conscience and the shameless fury of the music. In "Infinite and Unforeseen" and "I Want It All," her voice rises and dives like a ballet dancer's swoops. In "Sexuality," she both argues with herself and flirts with the music, halfway between satisfaction and misgivings delivered in a dark gray voice full of overdramatized foreboding (one thinks of Marianne Faithfull). The rest of lang's attempts to communicate the dry feeling in romantic loneliness don't quite succeed. Unresolved melodies, metallic arrangements, too many mid tempos, and too much reliance by lang herself on the same slow sigh paint her ornamented intimacies into a corner of mere affectation.

**1/2 k.d. lang

ALL YOU CAN EAT

(Warner Bros.)

- Michael Freedberg