In my opinion, Christine barely put a hoof wrong until the Mirage album. That's when my adoration for her songwriting abilities and vocal prowess began to wane. I think most of her output since 1982 has been insubstantial and pedestrian with the occasional highlight in the form of Isn't It Midnight, As Long As You Follow, Behind The Mask and Heart Of Stone.
I liked aspects of the 1984 solo album, but the production was so mundane overall, which was a shame when you consider that she had composed a decent batch of songs on that outing.
This comment is bound to alienate the majority of you, but I found Christine's vocals on the Tango album to be wispy, non-engaging and lightweight. It almost seemed as though she was mimicking Lindsey's vocal stylings at the time, lending a synthetic sheen to her songs.
I also thought Christine's contributions to the Time album were the nadir of her career - this was songwriting by numbers, prosaic and perfunctory in the extreme.
In The Meantime just further cemented her deterioration as a songwriter and features the dullest production of all time. Once again, I realise I'm on my own here, but I consider her vocals to be truly awful on this occasion. I've never been able to play this album all the way through, it's just too embarrassing for everyone concerned (most of all, the listener).
I definitely feel as though Christine was underrated from her origins in Chicken Shack all the way through to the Heroes Are Hard To Find album, before finally being properly recognised from the White Album onwards. Her work during this period (1967 - 1974) had been consistently brilliant and she continued to produce stellar work all the way through to Tusk in 1979. Her first side-step occurred with One More Night and yet, I still found it difficult to resist. It was from 1982 onwards that she began to lose my interest, but I still yearn for one last burst of greatness from her, perhaps courtesy of the ever-looming final Mac album...
|