Album Notes

“An enlightening hybrid, Richard Burgin’s ‘The Trouble With Love’ is the rare album that ably sets one mood inside of another….It’s ambitious, but Burgin’s strength is that of pointed understatement, conferring meaning by leaving out the high-gloss drama that a lot of writers focus on and letting implication do its bit.”-JazzTimes (August 2009)"Burgin's best CD yet, a moody, swanky, raw collection of songs that bare their passions with the same startling candor that fans know from the artist's prose. Matching the changing moods of the lyrics are tremulous intimations of Charlie Parker, Jim Morrison, and even Stephen Sondheim, sometimes shifting within a single song. And then there is the unforgettable voice of Chris Cefalu, a husky, gravelly, remarkable voice reminiscent of Leonard Cohen's and redolent of late-night whiskey and cigarettes. "The Trouble with Love" is a beautiful and compelling album. I don't know of anything like it in contemporary popular music."-Andrew Weinstein, noted critic and writer“Frankly these are the freshest most surprising love songs of my generation.” -David Shapiro, National Book Award-nominated poet and musician “I’ve listened carefully to Richard Burgin’s skillful, melancholy and contagious songs. His songs are the real thing.” -Ned Rorem, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer “Richard Burgin is a strikingly gifted song writer and composer. Certain of his songs are cries from the heart that lodge powerfully in the listener like the memory of our most heart-rending experiences.” -Joyce Carol Oates, National Book Award-winning novelist"It’s a marriage made, if not in heaven, then certainly ‘round the back of a smoky after-hours club. Burgin’s words are an exercise in disenchantment and detachment, and Cefalu delivers the words with stark abandonment and hushed tones. Let’s just say that fans of early Tom Waits, Terry Stamp and John Howard should beat a path to it."-Leicester Bangs Magazine