Review by Alex Henderson
author: Alex Henderson
Stylistically, Russell Kleintjies is not an easy artist to pin down. During the course of Straight from the Heart, the Cape Town, South Africa-based singer tackles everything from Latin-flavored material to dance-pop to jazz-influenced traditional pop of the Frank Sinatra/Tony Bennett/Dean Martin variety. But if this album, which Kleintjies originally released in early 2009, has a dominant direction, it would be adult contemporary and Top 40 fare with a strong R&B influence and a major appreciation of the 1970s and 1980s. Straight from the Heart isn’t consistently retro, but it is retro a large amount of the time. And quite often, this album is a throwback to a time when Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald, Boz Scaggs, Chicago, Linda Ronstadt, and others were very R&B-influenced even though pop/rock was their primary direction. Straight from the Heart has a lot of pop-soul appeal, and that heard clearly on “Need Somebody,” “Sweeter Than Honey,” “Gimme Love,” and “Thinking of You,” as well as “Living Without You” and the ultra-sentimental (some might say overly sentimental) ballad “Be My Valentine.”
But there are times when this album steps out of pop-soul and adult contemporary altogether. For example, “Beautiful” (not to be confused with Christina Aguilera’s 2002 hit) is jazz-influenced traditional pop of the big band crooner variety which features singer Glenn Robertson on lead vocals and clearly owes a stylistic debut to the days of the Rat Pack. Kleintjies then brings a strong Afro-Cuban flavor to “Do Da Salsa” and the exuberant “Everybody,” both of which are performed mostly in English but toss in a few lyrics en español. Neither song was designed with Afro-Cuban purists in mind, but “Do Da Salsa” and “Everybody” are both catchy (if contrived) examples of the way Afro-Cuban music can influence non-Latin artists.
As a vocalist, Kleintjies’ performances on this album are not earth shattering, with his singing on the thin side. But Kleintjies is a generally competent songwriter, and the album’s diversity demonstrates that he is capable of writing many different types of songs. In fact, Kleintjies wrote everything on Straight from the Heart except the next-to-last track, which is an unlikely cover of Lionel Ritchie’s 1983 hit “Hello.” Originally an R&B/adult contemporary ballad in Ritchie’s hands, “Hello” is successfully transformed into fast-tempo dance-pop on Kleintjies’ album and acquires 123 beats per minute. Kleintjies isn’t the only artist who has covered “Hello,” but he certainly puts a different spin on the song, and his dance-floor arrangement works surprisingly well. Kleintjies doesn’t sing on “Hello”; the lead vocalist is Monique Hellenberg. Matter of fact, Straight from the Heart finds Kleintjies featuring a long list of other singers on lead vocals, including Portia Cairns, Leslie Klein-Smith, Richard Ceaser (who is heard on “Sweeter Than Honey,” the gospel-flavored “God’s Love” and the adult contemporary ballad “Wishful Thinking”), Judy Joubert (who is the main attraction on the funky “Keep On Dancing”) and Zane Carim (heard on “Everybody”).
Strictly from a marketing standpoint (as opposed to the creative or artistic), it isn’t hard to imagine that an A&R exec at a major label would tell Kleintjies that Straight from the Heart is too far-reaching stylistically and that he needs to be less eclectic. However, Kleintjies’ diversity is one of his strong points. It would have been a shame if, for example, he had omitted “Beautiful” simply because it doesn’t have the pop-soul and adult contemporary appeal that many of the other tracks have. At any rate, Straight from the Heart is a generally decent, if slightly uneven, listen from this Cape Town resident.
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