Wild Hope

by

Mandy Moore

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I feel like I listened to a different album than the other two reviewers so far did. Mandy Moore started out with So Real, an album that even Mandy admits she didn't like. On that album, she was just another Britney clone, without as many guilty pleasures. The CD I Wanna Be With You featured the title ballad that was a departure, but the CD was pretty much the same. The self-titled album showed growth with some good hooks, but Mandy's vocal maturation wasn't complete. Coverage showed her able to tackle some classic songs. Now, on Wild Hope, Mandy has made a gem of a CD that has confident vocals and sparkling folk/pop songs. Her voice can sound higher on "Extraordinary," or lower and soulful on "Nothing That You Are" and "Few Days Down." Collaborating with acclaimed artists like The Weepies, Chantal Kreviazuk, and Lori McKenna has helped Mandy form her own sound. An album that's a bit comparable is Jewel's Spirit, but Wild Hope is a bit more classic pop than that CD. Mandy manages to create artistic songs that also have strong melodies. The melodies might not all be radio friendly, but listen enough and you will be humming the songs. "Wild Hope," really pure folk, just might be my favorite song. Mandy has really surprised me with this amazing CD!

Mandy Moore emerged during the TRL pop explosion that shaped 1999. I'm not sure if "Candy" was her first song, but it was the first song I heard from her, and I thought her singing in it was just awful. Even though she sang much better on "Walk Me Home", that also made obvious the problem that she actually DID have a good voice, but her lyrics left much to be desired -- and it didn't help that her second album I Wanna Be with You contained most of the songs from her first album. Her self-titled album had the same problem of good vocals and bad lyrics, and I never got around to hearing her obligatory covers album, Coverage (but I'm not sure anyone else did either). But I still decided to check out Wild Hope.

Before I listened to this album, I thought Mandy just put it together because she was bored (or maybe she realized that about five people saw Because I Said So), but all jokes aside, this album really isn't that bad. But it might not look so great on the surface because at the beginning on the album, every OTHER song is good. First you have the aptly titled "Extraordinary", but then you have the ironically titled "All Good Things" (mainly because Mandy is singing with apparently no effort). After that is the good "Slummin' in Paradise", followed by "Most of Me", which could stand a rewrite.

But there are still more good songs, like "Looking Forward to Looking Back" and the title track; and although "Can't You Just Adore Her" looks extremely cheesy on paper, it's all in the way the lyrics are sung. I can do without "Nothing That You Are" and the bizarre "Ladies' Choice", though (and on the latter, Rachael Yamagata has definitely written better songs than that). Wild Hope isn't a classic but it's Mandy's best album so far, so you shouldn't mind mellowing out to it.

Anthony Rupert