No’am Newman wrote this review.
Sometimes when our esteemed music editor hands out discs for review, I choose to be masochistic and plump for the singer-songwriter material. The “S/S” epithet always conjures up (at least to me) an image of a sub-standard James Taylor clone, playing simple songs on an acoustic guitar which are interesting only to the singer and maybe to his girlfriend. Thus I was completely unprepared for Mike Asquino’s disc; although his promotional material dubs him a singer-songwriter, it is as far as possible from the music the masochist in me was expecting.
Asquino’s biography lists him as an active songwriter and musician from the beginning of the 1970s, and his professional expertise comes over very clearly on this disc. The ten songs on this 36 minute effort feature full arrangements with a five piece band (acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums and keyboards), and the cheerful and unpretentious sound produced is reminiscent of early 70s pop. Indeed, this disc sounds fairly anachronistic, and it sounds very little like any of the popular songs of today. Perusal of the liner notes reveals that all the songs were copyrighted during the 70s, so maybe the dating of the songs is understandable, and Asquino, as an old trooper, sees no reason to update the arrangements to fit today’s standards. The engineering and production, though, are quite contemporary.
Whilst the disc does have a warm and immediate style, there is very little variation in the dynamics. I’ve been listening to it with continuous play, and find it difficult to tell when the disc starts again. Two exceptions are the comparatively dramatic “Phone Calls And Memories,” and the stone country rock of “Old Friends And Fine Wine”. Another song that escapes the formula is “American Cowboy,” which is much more country than pop, and as such immediately causes my hackles to raise. But I’m sure that Asquino’s middle aged American audience will lap it up.
Asquino betrays his singer songwriter roots by including the aptly named “Singer Songwriter,” with such immortal couplets as “I’m a singer songwriter and I play my songs/In nightclubs and darkened bars.” One has heard such lyrics many times, and one might have hoped for slightly more individual lines, which might enlarge the singer-songwriter genre, and maybe explain the long hiatus in Asquino’s career. Most of the song lyrics are functional and of a reasonable standard, but every now and then there are lines that don’t sit correctly on the melodies, and make one wish that maybe a bit more effort had been expended in the lyrics department (most of the songs were cowritten by Asquino and George Robinson).
The opening song, “Good Morning, Good Morning” at the time of this review placed number 16 with a bullet in the Amazon contemporary country chart.
If your tastes run to upbeat country pop songs, then She Believes In Me is definitely worth checking out.
(Red Cloud Records, 2002)
