PAULA KELLEY
The Trouble With Success or How You Fit Into the World
(Kimchee Records)
Reviewed by Holly Day

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I just love this album! It's like some great happy rock opera, with big, swirling orchestral background music and Paula Kelley's big, happy, girlish voice singing about how wonderful life is and how great it is to fall in love. It's easy to picture Kelley twirling around on stage like some off-kilter Mary Tyler Moore while singing - really, I can't imagine her sitting still while she sings these songs. They must just have a gigantic studio for her to record in, or maybe they have to tie her to a stool to get her to sit still. This album reminds me of something Freddy Mercury would have done if he'd been a happy girl instead of a burly man, with brilliant operatic vocal crescendos, quiet, self-reflective interludes, and a wide variety of completely unexpected instrumentation that works just perfectly with all these songs.

© 2005 - Holly Day