Word: songfulness
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...joining a mission to spy on the Japanese. Most provocatively, there is the revelation of Nellie?s racism, after she discovers that her French dreamboat has fathered two mixed-race children. Even today, this seems an awfully daring turn for a 1950s musical to take. The famous second-act song, ?You?ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,? remains one of the most acidly subversive pieces of social criticism ever found in an American musical...
...Mostly they escape through song, and it?s wondrous to see and hear the over-familiar melodies and lyrics in context again. ?Some Enchanted Evening?, which always struck me as the stodgiest of the big R&H love ballads, becomes an affecting, shape-shifting reflection of the show?s emotional movement, from the joy of love-at-first-sight to the rueful foreshadowing of love lost. Even the seemingly simple lyrics of ?A Wonderful Guy? glide from ironic detachment to full-throated romanticism with deceptive wit and charm...
...adorability meter. Danny Burstein?s Luther Billis could use more Bilko-esque humor, and Matthew Morrison as Lt. Cable is bland. On the other hand, Paulo Szot, as de Becque, scales down the operatic bombast (with apologies to Ezio Pinza) and finds new depths of emotion in a touching song like This Nearly Was Mine. Nothing, in any event, goes very far wrong in this worthy revival of a show that, while no longer younger than springtime, still gets almost everything right...
...Destroyer’s polished eighth full-length LP, all the more impressive. “Destroyer’s Rubies,” the group’s critically lauded 2006 release, is one of the finest rock albums of the last five years. Each song was a painstakingly crafted wonder, sounding at once grandiose and sparse. Verses simply stuck; it didn’t matter if they were only mildly clever (“All good things must come to an end / The bad ones just go on forever”) or undeniably original (“Those...
...twist. Though the Dodos don’t present anything groundbreaking with this album, their interesting use of percussion sets them apart from the hordes of other groups like them. Unfortunately, though, even Kroeber’s unique drum licks fail to save the album from repetitiveness, and the songs soon begin to blend together. The percussive elements—consisting of everything from insistent toms over a deeper backbeat to the rat-tat of wooden sticks topped off with tingly silver bells—share a nearly equal billing with the vocals and often outshine Long?...