Double Trouble3 Out Of 5 Stars
Two years after his solo debut, Phil Seymour delivered another power-poptastic album, the unimaginatively titled 2, complete with a double image of Seymour dressed in stripes against a juicyfruit kind of backdrop. Similarities to the first album were more than intentional. The original album contained a mix by Val Garay ("Bette Davis Eyes," a lot of Linda Ronstadt) that has been scrapped for this reissue, along with Seymour's cover of Twilley's "Looking for The Magic," which has been moved to the reissue of Seymour's debut.
Which is something I have to admit, I didn't notice. The vinyl version of PS2 left my collection decades ago, so my memories of the original Boardwalk issue/mix are fuzzy at best. On the other hand, something that did stay with me and carries over is that PS2 was not as stellar an album as the debut. There's no song here that matches the perfection of "Precious To Me," although the Cowsills (!!!) penned "Dancing a Dream" comes closest. Phil also nicked a good unreleased Tom Petty song, "Surrender." There's plenty of jangle guitars ("Better to Me Than You") and heartache pop. Good stuff, albeit with thin production by Richard Polodor/Bill Cooper.
The gems are the previously unreleased tracks. In particular, they do a fine job on The Plimsouls' "Now" while not topping it, and beat Pam Tillis to "Maybe it was Memphis" (a top ten country hit for her) by almost a decade. One of my fave New Wave bands, 20/20, finds there song "Chemistry" in the bonuses, and a Textones song (PS was a member) "Gotta Get The Feeling Back" shows up here in what I assume is the original version. So I can certainly recommend PS2 to die hard power-poppers and Dwight Twilley fans, but the debut aces this disc by a pretty wide margin.
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