Barry Manilow - Even Now CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

Manilow's cheesy crooning, the bluesy, big-band arrangement for "I Was a Fool (To Let You Go)" carries the day with elegant restraint.

While far from flawless, these five cuts manage to overcome the familiar Manilow mannerisms that dominate—and devour—the rest of the LP. Barry Manilow's notion of vocal dynamics is to sing increasingly louder as the song goes along; he seems to feel that if he sang softly, it would kill his momentum. Such a strategy might work for Ethel Merman, but it simply makes Manilow's voice impenetrable, like a foghorn. For emotional intensity, he invariably substitutes more volume, more strings and an upward key change leading into the final verse. And such orchestration! Who could possibly justify the kind of corny, crashing arrangements Jimmie Haskell wreaks upon "Losing Touch" and "I Just Want to Be the One in Your Life," songs whose schlocky lyrics are hard enough to sell anyway?

Well, I don't suppose anyone expects taste, poetry or wit from Manilow. But most of the first side sounds good, and on the whole, Even Now is certainly less pretentious than it could have been. (RS 265)

DON SHEWEY