American Idol Brooke White releases her second album (but first post-Idol disc) on July 21 to traditional music stores. But iTunes has a week-long exclusive, with High Hopes & Heartbreak set for sale as a download Tuesday.
Here's the review that is scheduled to appear in The Miami Herald next Monday.
Brooke White, High Hopes & Heartbreak, June Baby Records. 3 stars.
American Idol judge Randy Jackson has never executive produced an album for any of the myriad contestants in the eight year history of the popular program. Until now.
It's surprising to see his name attached to Brooke White's first post-Idol release (she'd issued Songs From the Attic, a promising indie album pre-Idol). The gifted singer-songwriter played guitar and piano and sang well but always seemed an anachronism on the teen-driven program when she somehow managed to make it into the Season 7 Top 5.
Her musical heroes, she had said, were '70s icons like Carole King, Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon and her goal was to create an album for today that had the song-to-song flow of the oldies she cherished.
High Hopes & Heartbreak doesn't have the import or musical heft of a Tapestry or Rumours. Some of the tracks, like the single Radio Radio, just feel lightweight by comparison. Still, it's thankful that Jackson allows White to continue in her easy-going '70s vibe and doesn't push her to be overly contemporary, even when she pulls out a credible Kings of Leon cover (Use Somebody).
White is best in thoughtful singer-songwriter mode as on this CD's melancholic Out of the Ashes, a ballad that could easily have been plucked from a Simon album, or the breezy California Song in which she namedrops America, Mamas & the Papas and Joni Mitchell's early-period LP, Ladies of the Canyon. White ably evokes the sunny spirit of all of these icons without slavishly quoting them.
The disco-lite title track is the closest to modernity Jackson prods White toward but, even here, the infectious melody and reliance on timeless instrumentation, as opposed to trendy hardware, makes White's engaging High Hopes a peaceful easy feeling to take on the road.
--HOWARD COHEN
hcohen@MiamiHerald.com
Follow on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/HowardCohen
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