Fabulous

by

Sheena Easton

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It has been several years since Sheena Easton has had a major release outside of Japan and it's great to have her back! Her latest is a wonderful feel-good album drawing mostly on remakes of familiar dance and R&B classics of the 1970s and 80s.

It's hard to imagine anyone bringing anything new to such classics like Gloria Gaynor's "Never Can Say Goodbye", Donna Summer's "Love is in Control" or Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way", but she does come off as if she is having one heck of a great time!! She also manages to maintain high energy on "Giving up Giving In" (The Three Degrees) and does a quite creditable job on "Best of my Love" ("The Emotions"). There is one duet - "On My Own" (Patti Labelle/Michael McDonald) where she is joined by a quite youthful sounding Terry Donald - coproducer on the album. At first, I thought it sounded like Sheena was duetting with herself!

Interestingly, the two mellow cuts here may actually attract as much attention as the uptempo ones. She obviously has good taste in choosing Deniece Williams' "That's What Friends Are For" (from "This is Niecy") and giving it a smooth, sensual groove. "You Never Gave Me a Chance" (to my knowledge, not a remake) is vintage Sheena. However, the crowning jewel of this collection is the last track "Get Here to Me." This is a wonderful, star-out-slow turning into a high-steppin' disco anthem in the "Last Dance" tradition.

Sheena, the production and arrangements (not to mention the material) are terrific. For Sheena fans, it's quite worth the import price. The only real disappointment is that it all seems to end quite a bit too soon, but then you can just skip back to track 1 and start it all over again. Don't be surprised if you find yourself doing just that!

I love Sheena Easton's entire '80s catalog which chronicles her metamorphasis from the innocent squeaky-clean Scottish lass singing the poppy "Morning Train" to the red-hot slinky R&B siren wailing about "The Lover In Me", but this package is a big misstep for her and a big let-down for fans.

The biggest problem with Sheena's 16th album, originally released in 2000/2001 (seemingly everywhere but North America), is that the production is so uninspired and generic and seems marketed at the lowest common denominator. It doesn't help that the production overshadows her vocals either but at least she's really singing and they didn't vocode her vocals to death a la Cher on "Believe".

She tackles such disco classics as "Don't Leave Me This Way", "Never Can Say Goodbye" and "Best of My Love", but brings nothing new to them. Actually these remakes only remind the listener of how lush and soulful Thelma Houston, Gloria Gaynor and The Emotions all sounded back in the '70s.

On Donna Summer's "Love Is In Control (Finger on the Trigger)" and Patti Labelle/Michael McDonald's duet "On My Own" (inexplicably given the disco treatment), Sheena sounds bored and tired. The passion and spunk she displayed on simmering tracks like "101", "The Lover In Me" and "Strut" has all but vanished. We only see a spark of it on the album's best cut, a remake of The Three Degrees' "Giving Up, Giving In", which is only a tad more interesting than the other covers because here Sheena sounds raspy at times and not at all like herself and it has funky '70s-sounding guitar (think "Theme from "Shaft").

Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" almost falls into the "so-bad-it's-good" category thanks to some campy background vocals.

This album suffers from too many generic electronic beats and even the slower, romantic songs like "That's What Friends Are For" (an old Deniece Williams song, NOT the Dionne & Friends hit from 1986) suffer from this, and Sheena just comes as trying to be a Celine Dion clone.

If you love fast-pumping, computerized dance music like "If You Could Read My Mind" by Stars on 54, Janet Jackson's "Together Again" or "Believe" by Cher you will probably love this, but true Sheena fans should revisit anything from her '80s catalog instead of buying this, unless they want it for a workout album.