CD Reviews

Mary Weiss

Dangerous Game | Norton

By CHARLES TAYLOR | May 18, 2007

3.0 Stars

VIDEO: Mary Weiss and the Reigning Sound, "Stop and Think It Over"

“I don’t write hits,” sings Mary Weiss on her first — at 58 — solo album. But, man, did she sing them. As lead singer of the Shangri-La’s, Weiss was the voice at the center of the CinemaScope epics that producer Shadow Morton (chiefly) devised for the band. And that any voice stood out amid the strings, the sounds of seagulls and revving bikes, and all the other sonic spectacle on those great recordings is perhaps the best testament anyone can give her. You hear that same voice on Dangerous Game, no longer in the high, sometimes petulant register of her days with the Shangri-La’s, but with a richer bottom. Weiss sounds the way strong, creamy coffee tastes — she’s reassuring and also jolts you awake. The 14 songs here, most written by Greg Cartwright (one-third of the Reigning Sound, who back Weiss on most of the cuts), are, to borrow a line Robert Christgau once wrote of Marshall Crenshaw, the work of someone who hears classic rock and roll as living music and not living tradition. It may have taken 40-plus years for Weiss to record a solo album, but Dangerous Game was well worth the wait.

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