Think Like A Key 2025
Going almost all the way, seasoned veterans and young performers infuse the spirit of their favorite foursome with fresh juice.
Play On: A Raspberries Tribute
For all their BEATLES-like harmonies and STONES-esque shuffle, RASPBERRIES were never very popular outside the USA, and it’s only logical that if an homage must be paid to the band, it would largely come from American artists of diverse stature – but as far as tributes go, “Play On” feels as all-encompassing as it gets. And comprehensive, too, with 36 out the 39 songs spread across the ensemble’s quartet of albums covered with a lot of gusto and more than a little bit of fantasy by musicians old and new, famous and obscure. This is the beauty of such projects: the listeners arrive to concentrate on familiar names and end up discovering recently-emerged entertainers they can follow – even though the latter may sound less impressive in terms of giving a much-loved tune a genuinely original arrangement than the former who wouldn’t sound like anyone else even when hard-pressed to do so.
That’s why, while for many the entry point to this two-disc set will be the sweetly heavy, riff-driven opener “Go All the Way” as delivered by Rick Springfield in the company of the Bissonette brothers, or the gloriously glammed-up “Tonight” and the arena-wide, THE WHO-indebted “I Don’t Know What I Want” as served up, respectively, by Lou Gramm and John Waite and featuring RASPBERRIES’ own Jim Bonfanti on drums alongside the album’s co-producers, Ken Sharp on guitar and Fernando Perdomo on drums, the current generation bring on a different energy into the fold. Evan Stanley and Robin Taylor Zander – the clear-voiced scions of KISS and CHEAP TRICK frontmen – render Wally Bryson’s “Last Dance” and “Don’t Want To Say Goodbye” gently scintillating and slightly psychedelic, in a completely solo mode, without relying on orchestra, whereas his son, Jesse Bryson, and THE KENNEDYS give “Might As Well” a folk tinge. Just as effectively, THE LEMON TWIGS reimagine the title track and “Let’s Pretend” to make the classic vocal harmonies and instrumental bounce bloom with magic without veering too far away from their source, and THE SPONGETONES update the ’60s innocence of “It Seemed So Easy” to today’s blues-tinctured cynicism and, thus, emphasize the song’s timelessness.
There’s no chronological order to the record’s flow, so establishing a fresh context does indeed seem easy. It’s gratifying to hear THE BANGLES’ Vicki and Debbi Peterson inform “I Wanna Be With You” with mature femininity, and Karla DeVito take “I Can Remember” on a transcendentally intimate trip, alongside Tori Holub wrapping “Starting Over” in ethereality, and Katie Ferrara toning down “Come Around And See Me” to create a vibrant ballad. However, if Adelaide Estep’s removing beat from “I Saw The Light” enhanced the ballad’s orchestral charm, Brasko’s sprinkling “Making It Easy” with glitter and Eric Dover’s spiking “Ecstasy” with raga augments their sparkle, and Parthenon Huxley’s distilling the hook of “Hard To Get Over A Heartbreak” to a cappella works miracles. And if former UTOPIA colleagues Willie Wilcox and Kasim Sulton merely restyle, independently from one another, “With You In My Life” and “Cry” as, in turn, bubblegum pop and wobbly middle-of-the-road, Sharp’s stripping the lacquer from “If You Change Your Mind” and adding sheen, and Wally Stocker’s guitar, to “I’m A Rocker” changes these cuts more significantly, as does Marshall Crenshaw’s shaping “Should I Wait” as a torch country piece.
Still, the most radical approach is displayed by Cherie Currie electrifying “Hands On You” to emote over an infectious stomp, Bird Streets’s switching “I Reach For The Light” from elegy to a groove-fest, and John Powhida’s providing “I Can Hardly Believe You’re Mine” with disco jive: that’s how creative licenses should be applied. And then there’s “Please Let Me Come Back Home” which RASPBERRIES left at a demo stage and which BAMBI KINO properly fleshes out and polishes here. The results of it all are riveting – and prompt the audience to dust off those early ’70s platters to have an insight in whence the inspiration for “Play On” came from. Mission accomplished on many a level.
****1/2
