By Shawn Ohler, Edmonton Journal, January 10, 1998
Moe Berg's CD is lyrically brilliant (as usual), but musically sketchy and relentlessly bleak and self-indulgent.
On Summer's Over, The Pursuit of Happiness frontman continues to follow the same path he has travelled for a decade with TPOH. That is, personal, dead-on observations on sexual confusion, sexual inadequacy and, er, sex.
"Prisoner of lust, erratic and erotic/makes me clumsy, clueless and heteropsychotic," he sneers in Here's the Story. Damn, but the boy can write!
Along with tales from his tortured psyche, Berg also explores another old passion -- the organ. That doesn't work as well.
The instrumental Introducing the Solution sounds like something an eight-year-old would dash off while screwing around after his weekly lesson. For that matter, the other organ stuff is just as unlistenable.
When Berg employs the traditional guitar/bass/drums formula on rockers like Angelique is a Free Spirit and She's So Shallow, though, he's as solid as ever.
It's too bad, as our boy Moe sings in the latter, that he's so desperately sad.
Copyright © 1998 Edmonton Journal