Light My Fire

Album review

Baccara's second album offers little that lovers of the duo's debut won't be expecting -- the absence of their greatest hits notwithstanding, of course. Neither "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" nor "Sorry, I'm a Lady" have their supremacy challenged across Light My Fire, as the girls instead settle into a comfortable AOR Euro-disco groove exemplified by a whooping, hooting rendition of "La Bamba." Of course, that song had been crying out for a disco reinvention -- in fact, it's a wonder that no one had tried it before. But the reality is considerably less captivating than the theory, a failing that also drifts over the Doors' "Light My Fire" (disco-fied to far greater effect by Amii Stewart) and the traditional "La Adelita." Just when you think that the duo is all washed up, however, out leaps a clutch of songs that are genuine classics in waiting. "Parlez-Vous Français?" is sensational, a bubbling course in pidgin French that opens the suggestible mind to all manner of fascinating opportunities -- a Top Ten hit across much of Europe, "Parlez-Vous Français?" was huge in the U.K. clubs but, bizarrely, failed to hit that country's chart (their loss!). Also noteworthy is a buoyant take on the Ohio Express classic "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy," translated out of its former bubblegum majesty as, again, a saucy come-on that deserved more attention than it got. Not a great album, then, but certainly one with sufficient redeeming features to file it alongside its predecessor.

© Amy Hanson /TiVo