Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Molly's Chambers [CD-single] [Import]
Power Out [CD-single] [Import]
Riot on An Empty Street [Import]
Tanx [Import] [Original recording remastered]
Amazon.com
Sometimes a Circle captures moments of flux and uncertainty with a deft musical craft. Louise Goffin returned to recording after more than a decade's absence, and the album is thoroughly modern, grown-up pop with an open, airy sound built with producer Greg Wells. It layers loops, samples (the Kinks' "Phenomenal Cat"!), old-school keyboards from Jon Brion-style oddities to acoustic piano, and Goffin's vocals. Those move from cheery and girlish to plaintively beautiful--she can navigate sexy and wistful at once, as on the traveling-alone tale "What a Waste of a Perfectly Good Hotel Room." Her characters are often moving on the fly, with the title track empathetically observing a woman's married lover and the convenience store she drops into for makeup. Despite the loneliness that sits in the middle of some of these songs, Goffin also offers assurance (and even a glimpse of kittenishness on the knowing "Sleep with Me Instead"). Her name will forever be linked with those of parents Carole King and Gerry Goffin, but Circle is very much her own thing. --Rickey Wright