DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
LIVING WITHOUT YOUR LOVE

Having seemingly recovered from the half-success of her '78 comeback album It Begins Again, Dusty Springfield now offers us Living Without Your Love (Mercury), a collection of ten new songs which she produced in association with David Wolfer. Glad as I am that she's working - and very hard at that, considering the higher-than-average standard of most of the tracks on the album - I still wish that she'd go for a different approach as far as orchestrations are concerned. While less over-produced than last year's album, her voice, I'm still convinced, would be better showcased by more jazzy or just simpler arrangements. And does she really need all this double-tracking of her vocal, even if she seems to think that, like strong eye make-up (a glance at the back cover of her album), they're part of her image?

If the title track is Dusty's equivalent to Gloria Gaynor's current super-hit "I Will Survive" - ie, it's a positive song about a woman realizing that she doesn't need a man by her side to be a complete person - I much prefer her version of "You Can Do It" (a point in favour of simpler arrangements, as the guitar part works magnificently here), a song that Bill Withers has also recently recorded; Dusty's, just a mite slower and bluesy, is even better. The other superb song on Living Without Your Love, and it came as a surprise, is "Closet Man". It's somehow a confidential song, the woman singing telling the man that "your secret's safe with me" but that there is no need for secrecy as "It's alright to go on with your life/So come out into the light, closet man". The 'giveaway' in the song is that a ring she gave him, he now wears in his ear . . . Very cute.

Jean Claude Thevenin


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