December 28, 1 9 9 5 - January 4, 1 9 9 6

** Cheryl Wheeler

MRS. PINOCCI'S GUITAR

(Philo)

Buried about halfway through these 14 mostly forgettable numbers are two pretty, haunting ballads. "Howl at the Moon" and "The Storm" push Wheeler to her vocal and dramatic limits, evincing a raw edge and vulnerability utterly lacking elsewhere on this disc. These few stirring and unsettling moments stand in stark contrast to the plethora of nostalgia-laden tearjerkers clogging up the arteries of the rest of the recording, on which the sleepy-voiced singer/songwriter gets bogged down with paint-by-numbers, country-inflected folk-rock worthy of a Mary Chapin Carpenter wannabe (note the presence of numerous Carpenter bandmates here) and novelties that aren't. ("Is It Peace or Is It Prozac?" Neither; it's just dumb.) And there's also faux-hick shtick (the hillbilly-cornball "TV"). Not even the cheesy, recurring, cocktail-lounge organ motif can resuscitate "Makes Good Sense to Me," a sneering satire of the Republicans' "Contract With America" that will send you rummaging through your LP collection to find Randy Newman's Good Old Boys, to remind you of how this sort of thing is supposed to be done.

-- Seth Rogovoy