Randy Kaplan "Songs For Old Lovers"

Yellow Thing Records & Books, 2011

Restless artist lounges around.

• Randy Kaplan is a performer of many personae. In addition to a number of bluegrass-tinged albums in the singer-songwriter mould, he has recently won a cult following with a couple of children's albums, on which he comes across like Hamell On Trial for infants. For his latest release, meanwhile, he heads off in a different direction again to produce a collection of original compositions in the style of the Great American Songbook.

• But whilst many of the songs here are melodically almost indistinguishable from some of the stuff churned out by Tin Pan Alley in the first half of the Twentieth Century, replete with touches of vaudeville and lounge-jazz, the philosophy on which the songwriting is based is an outright subversion of the form.

  Indeed, songs like 'Let's Not Fall In Love' and 'Hard To Love' are outright rejections of the values which such songs typically expressed. Sadly, there is an extent to which the atmosphere of a particular genre of music is an intrinsic manifestation of its underlying ethos. Hence, the style of these songs conjures up moribund sentimentality through their formal properties alone and no amount of lyrical sharpness can dispel that atmosphere. There's a touch of latter-day Randy Newman about the project, but Kaplan's mellow, almost effeminate vocals cannot match Newman's ability to deliver an acidic line. As a result, it is unlikely that unbelievers will be able to penetrate the slick veneer, whilst fans of the genre will scarcely appreciate the ironic skew of the lyrics.

  It's impossible not to admire Kaplan's ability to recreate an aesthetic but arguably he has done so too closely to maintain the integrity of his lyrical vision.