Part Timer - Blue [Flau - 2007]I've listened to Blue many times, in an effort to connect with it, because it seems like I should like it a lot. It's a very pleasant album. The music is impeccably put together. The instrumentation, including acoustic guitar, and string quartet, is more than competently applied. There's electronic glitch-work too, and although this type of production is getting to be rather old hat, it's done with care and precision. There are human voices, children and adult, interspersed here and there, which blend nicely with the largely acoustic music. There's a mellow pop, by way of nursery rhyme song in the middle of Blue as well, a pastoral respite within an album which itself is a respite from a fast paced world. Indeed the common factor in relation to the album is that it's as calm as a ripple-less lake in summertime. Which of course is not a bad thing in and of itself. I do not hate this album, in fact, in many ways I like it very much. The problem with Blue is that, though it makes for lovely background music, it doesn't draw you in as it should. It's oddly impersonal, perhaps because it's so carefully hewn. It's confounding for such a warm, organic album to have such an effect. It's kind of like a robotic attempt at manufacturing a sensitive moment. All of the elements are there, but it's somehow hollow. It's not for lack of trying that this album doesn't quite work, and I suspect many people will find it very enjoyable. It is fine as background music, but the manufactured naturalism precludes it from up close inspection on a regular basis.    Erwin Michelfelder
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