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Pink Martini | Splendor in the Grass

Heinz (2009)
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  October 30, 2009
3.0 3.0 Stars

0910_pinkm_main

The members of Portland’s Pink Martini have covered plenty of well-known songs in their decade and a half together, like “Que Sera, Sera” on their 1997 debut, and the theme from I Dream of Jeannie in their early live shows. So they have no quarrel with popularity.

Compared with most other acts that have sold more than a million records, however, this little big band seem utterly uninterested in the realm of Top 40 pop — at least as the Top 40 has behaved since the mid ’60s or so. Pink Martini’s version of familiarity always feels faraway, or forgotten.

All the same, here on the group’s fourth studio disc, we find a version of “Sing” by the Carpenters, one of the most successful mainstream pop acts of all time. Could it be that bandleader Thomas Lauderdale has finally caved in? Hardly: Pink Martini “return the song to its roots” by having frontlady China Forbes do it as an English-Spanish duet (with the dude who played Luis on Sesame Street) — which is how Joe Raposo wrote it in the first place. Oh, and there’s also a backing choir made up of high-school kids and folks who work in the office of Portland’s mayor, Sam Adams. Quirk lives!

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ARTICLES BY MIKAEL WOOD
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  •   PINK MARTINI | SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS  |  October 30, 2009
    The members of Portland’s Pink Martini have covered plenty of well-known songs in their decade and a half together, like “Que Sera, Sera” on their 1997 debut, and the theme from I Dream of Jeannie in their early live shows.
  •   ERIN MCKEOWN | HUNDREDS OF LIONS  |  October 21, 2009
    This local folkie has spent the past few years sifting through the ample riches of the Great American Songbook, first on 2006’s excellent Sing You Sinners , then on Lafayette , a spirited follow-up taped live at Joe’s Pub in New York.
  •   BARONESS | BLUE RECORD  |  October 14, 2009
    For a band of ultra-prosaic album titlers, Baroness are big thinkers when it comes to their music.
  •   REVIEW: WHITNEY HOUSTON | I LOOK TO YOU  |  September 09, 2009
    It's tempting to wonder whether super-producer Clive Davis, in another of his music-biz machinations, arranged for Whitney Houston to whiff last week on Good Morning America , which is reported to have altered Houston's vocals for broadcast after she sounded hoarse during her Central Park mini-concert.
  •   JAY REATARD | WATCH ME FALL  |  August 25, 2009
    Jay Reatard is the Lil Wayne of the Memphis garage-rock scene.

 See all articles by: MIKAEL WOOD

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