Tough Love

Take a good chunk of Pat Benatar, toss in a touch of Siouxie (and the Banshees) and Pearl Harbor (and the Explosions) beside a Joan Jett-ish tendency to metalline rock and you have Gala Rizzatto. The lead cut in Tough Love is pure chart material, but its follower, Faraway, is an interesting blend of progressive mellowed-out rock with an extremely catchy guitar/keyboard ostinato and well-woven ambient colorations flowing into a mid-section electronic fragmentation that ushers the hypnotic pattern back in again.

Then I'm the World takes much the same route with an accordian and jittery Marc Ribotish guitar line, a threepenny tune surprisingly mature in contrast to the opening cut and mesmerizingly theatrical. Perhaps the most arresting aspect of the two cuts is the fact that they were written completely by Gala whereas the rest were collaborations. The closer, You and Me is the best of the collabs, quite a nice chart cut again, but the musical maturity of Faraway and I'm the World is evidence that Rizzatto may very well turn out to be a formidable composer if she chooses to follow her own unique tendencies rather than chasing the chart muse. In the short format of an EP like this, it's hard to tell for sure, but compositions of that level are never accidental. For those two cuts alone, the EP is worthwhile and reveals the potential of an unusual presence.

Track List:

Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)