Comments for Almond, Marc, THE STARS WE ARE

The album, a follow up to the sparser material he released with Virgin, shows Marc''s new-found budgetary freedom expressing itself in a lush, romantic ecstasy of overkill. Concurrent with this is a new, sympathetic tenderness towards the listener quite absent from ''Virgin''s Tale II'' (the recently released collection of B-sides etc.) In several songs, he almost touches ''real life'' as it were. If his earlier work presented an intensely personal set of experiences and challenged the listener to come to terms with it somehow, this album gently massages its audience - "You can have my smiles, my tears, my wishes - here''s a fortune to adorn you". Marc rewards us with some classic material. The only slight disappointments are the duets; the version of Marc on his own singing "Something" makes the Gene Pitney version excruciating; "Kept Boy" is not quite dramatically successful: it''s very contrived. The duet with Nico is a little out of place on the album - after the softness of ''Only the Moment'', it jars. By far the best track on the album is ''She Took My Soul'' - a gloriously lush arrangement full of passion, musically and lyrically poetic throughout. As a whole, the album doesn''t quite hold together; "Your Kisses Burn" and "Tears Run Rings" don''t quite gel. However, it is still a must for any Almond collector

MARC ALMOND IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SINGERS. THE MUSICAL STYLE OF THIS ALBUM IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY DANCE MUSIC AND ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.