Wild Romance

AMG Review of Wild Romance

Richard S. Ginell
All Music Guide

With his sights aimed squarely at the R&B charts, where he had become a regular visitor in the 1980s, Herb Alpert continued to collaborate with keyboardist John Barnes and bassist Romeo Williams on an album of mostly R&B-flavored dance music. Alpert sounds exactly the same as he had throughout most of the '80s thus far, merely grafting his spare, gently dancing trumpet onto drum machines and electronic keyboard textures, with Brenda Russell adding soul vocals at times. The most evocative track is the relatively reflective "African Flame" (later the B-side for "Cantare, Cantaras," the Latin American answer to "We Are the World"), and Alpert still exercises his vocal cords on a couple of tracks. Otherwise, this is mostly routine high-tech club music for the 1980s.