I was having a Debbie Gibson moment. Actually, it was a “whatever happened to?” moment and the joys of the Internet provided some entertaining answers to the Debbie Gibson question (with pictures!) That got me wondering about the shopping mall pop music that La Gibson et al used to purvey in those simpler, pre American Idol days. Lo and behold, the answer came with Danny Katz’s album “Japanese Satellites”.
I had thoughts that the songs on this album represented some sort of plastic powered revenge on an ex-girlfriend and the opening song “I’ll Pretend” does seem to suggest that there might be some venom on the way. However, while there are some neat songs here like “Passover” that used a GPS as an analogy for a disappointing life based on pretensions, the standard isn’t really maintained with “Limitation” and “Breakfast” struggling in the both the imagination and energy stakes. Looking at the album as a whole, there really is far more self pity than venom on show.
So, Mr Katz seems to be your typical modern day sensitive male singer songwriter who is at the odds with the world (but only slightly). Lyrically and vocally there isn’t much to lift this album out of the plethora of similarly wounded males and nothing sparkles here making this inoffensive album sound like the work of a man on his own. He really needs to get out, meet some new women, develop a drink problem and stop spending his Saturday nights alone with GarageBand.