Not So Much to be Loved as to Love

The cover of Jonathan's new release, Not So Much to be Loved as to Love, is an intriguing silhouette of a woman kissing a dog at sunset. My first reaction to the songs inside was a bit muted. As has been the case on several Jonathan discs, the foreign language songs are the most instantly striking. Much of the rest seems to coast along on a mid-tempo shuffle with lyrics that don't seem to have been fleshed out. "Salvador Dali" is the weakest, by far, of the great painters series but also included is a fine version of "Vincent Van Gogh" complete with some new lyrics and a plaintive guitar. It took me a while to discover that the finest number is the final cut, an unlisted bonus track (#15) which is a softer version of the title cut. Stripped of extraneous noise, this song seems to some up Jonathan's career quite well and ranks as his strongest number of the new millenium.

-- Adam