My Town, My Guy & Me

Album review

Lesley Gore's fifth album (not counting her first greatest-hits collection) was her last fairly strong non-greatest-hits LP, and the last to feature a reasonable standard of material. Only the title cut was a significant hit, and not a huge one at that (stalling outside of the Top 30). As usual, there were a number of goodies for fans inclined to dig beyond the 45s of this very singles-oriented artist. "Before and After" was a nice Van McCoy ballad that had already been a big hit for Chad & Jeremy, and several numbers had a nice Phil Spector-like production with somewhat more pop-oriented material and vocals than Spector favored, like "What's a Girl Supposed to Do?," "I Cannot Hope for Anyone" (previously done in French by Françoise Hardy as "Je N'Attends Plus Personne"), and "Baby That's Me." The Spector-esque touches on the final two songs are unsurprising given the production by frequent Spector associate Jack Nitzsche, who really pulled out all the son-of-Spector stops for "What Am I Gonna Do With You," which sounds like a Ronettes or Crystals track with Gore vocals. Everything else is outclassed by the deviously playful "You Didn't Look Around," which has catchy hooks and an assertively melodramatic vocal on par with Gore's best hits. Her vocal performance on that song and some others, too, indicated that she really was making some strides as a singer into more mature and full phrasing, though she faltered as always when she went into straight adult pop (on "The Things We Did Last Summer"). This is actually a fairly good album in sum, and not all of the good songs show up on It's My Party: The Mercury Anthology (though they're all on the It's My Party! box set on Bear Family), making it a desirable acquisition for Gore fans.

© Richie Unterberger /TiVo