#kimock

Song Review: Leslie Mendelson - “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice ...”

“The best time to make a rock ‘n’ roll record is when you’re broke and pissed off,” Leslie Mendelson says of If You Can’t Say Anything Nice ...

The title track and lead single indicates Mendelson is both of these things. An aggressive, punky, guitar-driven number that melds Ramones and Go-Go’s and barely breaches the two minute mark, “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice ...” is simplistic, clichéd and grating as Mendelson sings:

If you can’t say anything nice/don’t say anything at all/just as kingdoms will rise/kingdoms will fall

Subsequent verses swap do and think for say, but Mendelson clearly ran out of ideas about 10 seconds into the writing session.

Grade card: Leslie Mendelson - “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice ...” - D

Song Review: KIMOCK - “While We Wait”

John Morgan Kimock’s synths are at the forefront while Steve Kimock’s guitars wait until the three-minute mark to emerge on “While We Wait.”

The standalone, instrumental single from KIMOCK is spacey and full of electronic sound that might make a good toddler’s lullaby or come-down music at the end of a long trip. But once you pass age 22 or so, and unless you have a 2-year-old spending the night, “While We Wait” will mostly leave you waiting for Kimock’s guitar, which, even when it comes is so washed it effects it’s not recognizable.

Grade card: KIMOCK - “While We Wait” - C+

Song Review: Jackson Browne and Leslie Mendelson - “A Human Touch”

If you had an audio dictionary and asked it for the definition of sappy, formulaic songwriting, it’d probably play “A Human Touch.”

The Jackson Browne/Leslie Mendelson duet from “5B,” a documentary about a team of San Francisco medical professionals who changed the way HIV/AIDS patients were cared for in the epidemic’s early days, reflects the film’s subject matter. As often happens when songs take this tack, the resulting piano ballad is sickeningly sweet to the point of being obnoxious.

Browne and Mendelson each take a verse and join voices on the chorus:

Everybody gets lonely/feel like it's all too much/reaching out for some connections/or maybe just their own reflection/not everybody finds it/not like the two of us/sometimes all anybody needs/is a human touch

Perhaps it works in the context of the movie. But no one outside the movie house - including big fans of either Browne or Mendelson - is likely to enjoy this mawkish dreck.

Grade card: Jackson Browne and Leslie Mendelson - “A Human Touch” - D-