Personnel: Bobby Orlando (vocals, guitar, harmonica, Mellotron, synthesizer, drums, percussion).
Audio Mixer: Peter D.
Audio Remixer: Peter D.
Editor: Bobby Orlando.
Photographer: Bobby Orlando.
Bobby Orlando is best known as the producer of such legendary and semi-legendary '80s bands as Pet Shop Boys and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. And if you listen to his first solo album in 20 years, you'd swear it was the mid-'80s all over again: if "Vanity" doesn't bring back memories of big bangs and Members Only jackets with pushed-up sleeves, then you're definitely too young to enjoy this album. That's not to say that Orlando does everything here in the same style -- there's guitar pop, synth pop, house, and even a truly misguided attempt at a sort of country-electronica fusion. But no matter what he does, it sounds like the '80s, and there's really nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong, however, with his lyrics, which are almost uniformly horrible. "Some things are never gonna change," he sings, "like war and peace." "How much will it take," he asks, "before you break my bank? And break my heart?" Ugh. Where's Neil Tennant when you need him? The best tracks make it easy to ignore the lyrics -- these include "Androgyny," on which he sounds like an enervated and sexually confused Gary Clail, and "Vanity," which sounds like a Pet Shop Boys outtake. But sad to say, not very many of them are that good. ~ Rick Anderson minimize