Long-time members of the DV Faithful Millions (and I do mean longtime) will remember that Peter Cincotti has graced these pages once before, with his debut CD. On that fine piece of work, a very young (19) Cincotti nailed an album\u2019s worth of jazz standards \u2013 this after he played the Montreux Jazz Festival at the tender age of 17.<\/p>\n
So, you might well ask, what\u2019s he been doing since then?<\/p>\n
After two albums of more or less traditional vocal jazz, he hooked up with producer David Foster (Chicago, Josh Groban, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, 16 Grammy awards, et cetera, et cetera) and began exploring a more pop-tinged sound. His first CD in that vein, East Of Angel Town<\/i>, will show up here at some point, but today we\u2019re looking at Cincotti\u2019s fourth CD, Metropolis<\/i>.<\/p>\n
How to describe this CD? Cincotti is all over the map here, but in a good way; he proves himself musically flexible to the point where he\u2019s the pop music equivalent of a Cirque du Soleil performer. There are, however, both hits and misses on Metropolis<\/i>. \u201cDo Or Die\u201d is a clever, bouncy song about wanting to seize an important moment; \u201cTake A Good Look\u201d is a heartbreaking end-of-the-relationship tearjerker; and \u201cMagnetic\u201d is about the inevitability of returning to a forbidden relationship. (\u201cMagnetic\u201d includes some extremely clever lines: \u201cMaking all the same mistakes \/ As my moral compass breaks\u2026\u201d is by far the best.)<\/p>\n
However, \u201cGraffiti Wall\u201d and \u201cNothing\u2019s Enough\u201d don\u2019t quite work as well. \u201cWall\u201d is disjointed \u2013 great melody, weak lyrics \u2013 and \u201cNothing\u2019s Enough\u201d comes off as preachy. In addition, the title track is just\u2026odd. I\u2019ve listened to this album dozens of times, and I still haven\u2019t decided if I like it. I have decided, however, that it should be the soundtrack to a Bioshock<\/i> game.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s \u201cMadeline.\u201d<\/p>\n
A song about the one that got away, \u201cMadeline\u201d is a four-minute punch in the gut. Yes, it\u2019s personal for me, and no, I\u2019m not going to go into details, but \u201cMadeline\u201d is one of the few songs that can make me cry, no matter how many times I\u2019ve heard it. Sometimes, a songwriter hits perfection (Tom Smith\u2019s \u201cA Boy And His Frog,\u201d Fred Small\u2019s \u201cDenmark 1943,\u201dCarrie Newcomer\u2019s \u201cLazarus\u201d). This is one of those. Cherish it.<\/p>\n
Is Metropolis<\/i> a little uneven at times? Yes. Is it still worth your time? Definitely. There\u2019s not a lot of intelligent pop music in the world; let\u2019s enjoy what we do have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":33994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6816],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-45822","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-peter-cincotti","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45822"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45822"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}