Customer Reviews
that's just the woman in me!!
This CD includes the original version of "That's Just The Woman In Me" covered fantastically by Celine Dion on her "Taking Chances" cd.
The originals, and still the best
Half the songs from each album were re-recorded for their Capitol Records debut. This set is their first two albums they made for Attic Records, 'Walking on Sunshine' and the imaginatively titled 'Katrina and the Waves 2'. Skip that cd, and get this instead.
The original albums hail back to the early days of rock and roll: 10 songs each and 1/2 hour long; songs about dancing, songs about love, more songs about dancing, more songs about love. What else is there? AND, there's not one clunker in the bunch.
The music is straightforward and catchy. The lyrics are deceptively simple: check out "She Loves to Groove" for example. You could have all the lyrics memorized by the second listen. Not a lot of rock and roll today does that. Katrina and the Waves never had pretensions about the music they were making, and god love 'em for that. Katrina is one of the most overlooked and underrated singer/shouters ever. Her voice is a force of nature.
As for the extra tracks, "That's Just The Woman In Me" is the best; again, deceptively simple lyrics and Katrina's soulful singing. The covers of "River Deep" and "Hearbeat" are. . . ok.
The back of the cd sums it up best: "This is guitar driven R&B rock ' roll. PLAY LOD. ".
Overdue reissue of classic early '80s guitar pop
In some respects, the song was definitive, as it came from the classic KATW template -- meld Motown and power pop, get the band hopping and let Katrina Leskanich unleash her spectacular blue eyed soul vocals. Purveyors of one of the ultimate summer singles, "Walking on Sunshine", Katrina And The Waves have been sadly marginalized, because that one song of is ubiquitous to this day. While it's true that very few guitar pop bands ever have a massive hit, and thus, KATW already got more than similar bands ever dreamed of, it's equally true that they deserved so much more. Then again, the band came of age when many of the best power poppers could barely get the attention of the major labels -- The dB's first two albums only came out in England, for example. This context explains why the first two Katrina And The Waves albums, featured here on CD for the first time, only came out on Attic Records in Canada. They weren't even reissued after the band's success on major. That it took so long for them to come out again is a shame, as both albums are littered with fantastic songs, mostly from the pen of Kimberly Rew, who already knew undeserved obscurity from his tenure in The Soft Boys. Rew was (and still is) also an ace guitarist, as shown by the bubbling fretboard work that is evident throughout. So delight to the original versions of songs that appeared on the band's major label debut like "Sunshine", "Going Down to Liverpool", "Mexico", "Do You Want Crying", "Que Te Quiero" and "The Game of Love", which may be Rew's golden R & B songwriting moment, as it sure sounds like a Stax classic. Whether you prefer the original versions is up to you -- there's no incorrect preference. And if you only know the big hit album, well, there's plenty more tracks of that quality on here. "Spiderman" is a superb power pop song that grabs immediately, "She Loves to Groove" would have been a perfect song for Nick Lowe and Rockpile to cover, and "I Really Taught Me to Watusi" is rhumba-dumb fun. There are also some fine bonus tracks, including a live "Sunshine" and a smoking cover of "River Deep Mountain High", which, along with the Waves original "Cry for Me", serve as proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Leskanich was a top rank soul shouter.
. You can see a complete list of all Katrina & the Waves discography, or go back to the Katrina & the Waves tabs
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