The whole turns out to be an uneasy mix. Three Carole King songs "Beautiful." "Where You Lead," and "You've Got a Friend" are included, and they provide the key to what's wrong with the record.
Just as Barbra's Stoney End might be called her Laura Nyro album, this might be considered her Carole King album. On Stoney End Barbra did a creditable imitation of Laura Nyro, who herself embodies a wide range of stylistic affectations. But Carole King is a different kettle of fish, and her meaning is lost on Barbra. The best Carole King songs express the basic sentiments powerful cliches, actually with remarkable terseness and lack of pretension. In order to be effective in performance, they must be delivered in a matter-of-fact manner, since their emotions are so direct that they need only be stated, or even understated. Barbra Streisand invariably dramatizes and stylizes whatever she sings, and although she has partly subdued the impulse to act and cough up special effects, she has not gone far enough. Her persistent emotiveness, with overtones of hysteria, is still apparent, and Carole's tough-fragile songs sink under the weight of this stage business. On "Beautiful," the most successful of the three King interpretations, Barbra comes off sounding something like Lena Horne, but lacking the final brassy polish of complete stylization.
An unqualified bummer is Barbra's rendition of John Lennon's "Mother," in which she "belts out" the primal scream. A mechanized shriek that has all the humanity of a police siren, it makes an embarrassing mockery of a great song Barbra's "Love" similarly suffers from theatrical preciousness. On two cuts–"Space Captain" and "I Mean to Shine" the "new" Barbra shows impressive vocal assurance, especially in the upper register where she sounds somewhat like the latter-day Diana Ross, quite comfortable without vibrato. This suggests that Barbra could develop into an accomplished apostle of Broadway soul.
It is the "old" Barbra, however, who provides, with one exception, the strongest cuts on the album. The exception. "The Summer Knows," is the abysmal theme from the film Summer of '42. A wistful Michel LeGrand tune plastered with gibberish filler lyrics and ornamented with surf-'n'-gull so
Barbra out-divas herself on this 1994 release. She delves into everything from politics (loves Bill Clinton) to psychoanalysis (some issues with her parents). Backed by Marvin Hamlisch and an impressive orchestra, she hits most of her career highlights and peppers the concert with cozy fireside chats. Hot stuff for Babs fans.
