Achingly Funny & Beautiful. - The Kind of Love You Never Recover From... that song says it all. It makes me feel like crying everytime I hear it. But the whole album is so well-formed and wry... give it a whirl.
As funny as ever - I ll be honest, I bought this CD for one song only - The Shopping Cart of Love. This song is the funniest thing I have ever heard on the radio and I just sat with my mouth open when I first heard it, it made me want to be able to write songs that clever! Now I love the rest of the album too. That trademark bittersweet view of life, love and relationships that Lavin fans know so well is at its peak in this album, which does indeed explore the themes of attainable (and unattainable) love. I particularly love The Kind of Love you Never Recover from , the heartfelt fear of perhaps blowing it or missing out on your soulmate. The only thing missing for me on this album, is a real, secure,love song, but I think we will have to wait until Ms Lavin meets her soulmate for that, and methinks she might lose her muse if that were to happen!
Christine Lavin s Attainable Love - This is a good Lavin starter CD for new listeners. It has humor (Shopping Cart Love) which appeals to young and old. It has meaningful relationship songs as well, with music complicated enough to make them more than fluff. It wont date easily - nice to listen to year after year.
The good stuff here is worth 6 stars, a few items only 3... - This is actually my second review of this CD...for some reason, my reviews of the five Christine albums I own are stored on Amazon in a different file than the one you might be reading now. I recently listened to this for the first time in many months, and my gosh, it holds up well. The Kind of Love You Never Recover From and Shopping Cart of Love are still unforgettable. Sensitive New Age Guys while dated, is still true and memorable. Attainable Love will always be true. Yonder Blue is a beautiful lament about lovers who travel too much in different directions, and Moving Target looks at the same idea from a far different point of view. Fly on the Plane is a fine example of Christine s demented side, funny and weird. Some fans like her live releases best, some find too much chatter. I chose to own mostly studio albums, but she is just such an attractive personality that you can t go too far wrong with any of her work. This remains my favorite whole album, even though Castlemaine and Victim/Volunteer are cuts I skip. Try Good Thing He Can t Read My Mind or Shining My Flashlight on the Moon or Future Fossils for other products that are worth the dough. Lavin works hard, does not take herself too seriously, helps other singers/writers up the ladder, stays loyal to those who taught her (i.e., Dave von Ronk) and cares about all the right things without having to pen furiously angry protest songs. One of those people who, having heard an album of hers, you would give an arm to meet and dine with.
Weird but wonderful, for thinking and feeling adults - My first girlfriend from 30 years ago wanted me to hearThe kind of Love You Never Recover From and it took me three years to finally find and buy the album it s included on. I only received it two days ago and have listened to the whole thing three times. While Kind of Love is indeed a GREAT song, there are several other cuts that are superb. Shopping Cart of Love is to marriage-age women what Alice s Restaurant was to us draft-age men back in l967. It is unforgettable. There are three or four other songs that are simply irrestible as well, along with perhaps three that don t work so well, but are still listenable. The good stuff here is worth the price. Trust me. I m old, and I ve heard a lot of music in my time. I ll be buying more Lavin stuff pretty quick.