Blue Pacific (album)

Blue Pacific
Studio album by Michael Franks
Released 31 May 1990
Genre Smooth jazz
Vocal jazz
Length 52:24
Language English
Label Reprise
Producer Walter Becker
Tommy LiPuma
Jeff Lorber
Michael Franks chronology

Indispensable: The Best of Michael Franks
(1988)
Blue Pacific
(1990)
Dragonfly Summer
(1993)

Blue Pacific is a smooth vocal jazz album by American singer-songwriter and musician Michael Franks, released in 1990 with Reprise.[1] It was Franks' eleventh studio album after The Camera Never Lies in 1987 and prior to Dragonfly Summer in 1993.

Background

The album marked three notable returns for Franks. The first was a return to the Reprise Label he'd released The Art of Tea with in 1976, fourteen years prior. Tommy LiPuma also returned as producer after a ten-year absence, the last album they worked on being One Bad Habit in 1980.

Commentators noted the stylistic return to the more laid back, Brazilian jazz inspired music of his earlier works, as opposed to the more electronic pop sound Franks had experimented with throughout the 1980s.[2][3]

Track listing

Side one
No. Title Length
1. "The Art Of Love"   4:10
2. "Woman In The Waves"   5:58
3. "All I Need"   4:46
4. "Long Slow Distance"   5:09
5. "Vincent's Ear"   6:21
Side two
No. Title Length
1. "Speak To Me"   5:01
2. "On The Inside"   5:12
3. "Chez Nous"   4:29
4. "Blue Pacific"   4:58
5. "Crayon Sun (Safe At Home)"   6:20

Personnel

Musicians

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
AllMusic [2]

Reception to Blue Pacific was generally positive.

Writing for AllMusic, Stephen J. Matteo praised Franks' "return to form and his best album since 1979's Tiger in the Rain", commenting that "[t]he album marked a total rebirth for Franks." He described the album as "[m]editative, lush and clearly the work of an artist intent on making personal music regardless of trends or airplay, Blue Pacific is as open and beautiful as the ocean for which it is named."[2]

Writing in the Orlando Sentinel in the year of the album's release, Susan M. Barbieri commented that "[w]hereas Franks' last effort, The Camera Never Lies, didn't quite click as an album, Blue Pacific does.". She described the work as an "easy vocal [stroll] that [lulls] the listener into joining him in a state of calm" and praised the lyrics as "clever pop poetics for which this former English teacher is known."[3]

References

  1. "Discography in Order of Release". MichaelFranks.com. Retrieved 2012-02-11.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Matteo, Stephen J.. Blue Pacific  Michael Franks at AllMusic. Retrieved 2012-02-11.
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Michael Franks  Orlando Sentinel". The Orlando Sentinel. 1990-09-14. Retrieved 2012-03-15.

Bibliography

External links