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Artist: Artist: Stacy Glen Tibbetts
Album: Out on the Town
Label: Hairless Dog Music
Website: http://www.stacyglen.com
Technical Grade: 4/10
Production/Musicianship Grade: 5/10
Commercial Value: 2/10
Overall Talent Level: 4/10
Songwriting Skills: 5/10
CD Review: Newsflash: Frank Loesser is alive and well and living in Altoona!

Or so 'old school' songwriter Stacy Glen Tibbett would have us believe. (Okay, Bellefonte, PA. Close enough) He brings us Out On the Town, a collection of original showtunes, tap tunes, ballads and, er, other stuff.

Clearly a lot of work and love has gone into this recording. Could have been recorded in 1936 without any change in lyric. He's got a nice sense of melody, nice titles. He suffers a bit from the Sondheimian disease of being too in love with his own 'clever' lyrics. Still, I wanted to give it a chance. But I find I can't.

His producing chops are atrocious. The sweet trifle 'New York in the Spring' is ruined by the overloud, not very good guitar that competes with the vocal for our attention. Waste of Time suffers from a badly put on 'New York' accent from Catherine Dupuis, who sounds good in Little Black Thing and who's not half bad on 'Snowbound', when she's on pitch. Many vocals suffer from overuse of effects (a ton of compression, I think, liberally dosed with reverb?). Everything is right up in your face...There's a reason God invented recording engineers!

Loved the trombone intro on 'I love the 4th of July'. But then there's 'Oowee, I love me some of that..." sugarlump? Sugarplum? Something like that. Whatever it is, it sounds like a white man imitating a black man on the chitlin circuit. Song goes downhill from there.

This cd feels like a demo reel with a nice cover. For a show I, personally, would not recommend. I wish you luck, but...not for the average consumer.

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