Tales of Love and Other Passions

AMG Review of Tales of Love and Other Passions

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Tales of Love and Other Passions was at least a couple of different Neil Sedaka albums in one. To begin with, it found Sedaka backed by a piano/bass/drums trio, and it often sounded more like a cocktail-jazz session than a standard Sedaka pop/rock outing. That sense was accentuated by the inclusion of five raditional pop standards among the selections: "I'll Be Seeing You," "The Very Thought of You" (a duet with Sedaka's daughter, Dara Sedaka), "You Go to My Head," "My Funny Valentine," and "Moonlight in Vermont," songs Sedaka performed with reverence and sincerity. When pianist Andy LaVerne and bassist Will Lee were granted jazzy solos during the opening track, "I'll Be Seeing You," you might have thought you were in a late-night jazz club. Interspersed with the covers were eight Sedaka originals that he had pulled from his trunk or that had appeared before as LP tracks on earlier albums. "Alone at Last" had first appeared on A Song in 1977 and even reached number 17 in Billboard's easy listening chart as a single in that version; "I Let You Walk Away" had been on Steppin' Out in 1976. The other songs were competent, if not top-drawer Sedaka, with "Inseparable" revealing a bit too obviously the influence of the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes"; "Swept Away" sounding like it might have been intended as a movie theme, and "When You're Gone" being the kind of soft rock song that could have appeared on any Sedaka album of the '70s or '80s. The overall theme, of course, was love allads, and the album ended up being a pleasant rendering of omantic music in different styles. But it probably would have been a better idea to do an album entirely given over to standards, rather than contrasting a handful of them with minor Sedaka compositions in more of a '70s-'80s pop mood.