The ninth volume of Bay Area Hot AC outlet Alice 97.3's
This Is Alice Music series features 14 more Alice artists getting their acoustic on for a good cause. (The disc promotes breast cancer awareness.)
Rob Thomas' "Lonely No More" is better when it loses the mechanized sheen of its studio version, but no arrangement, acoustic or otherwise, can save
Lenny Kravitz's tepid "Lady." There are also sufficiently organic, if somewhat motionless contributions from
Switchfoot ("Meant to Live"),
Maroon 5 ("She Will Be Loved"), and
Howie Day ("Collide"). In the plus column
Gavin DeGraw channels
Rufus Wainwright for a solo piano version of "Chariot," and the mannered, very English delivery of
Keane's
Tom Chaplin separates "Somewhere Only We Know" from dull post-grunge balladeers
Finger Eleven. Best might be
Avril Lavigne's "Happy Ending." She stole the show on
Alice @ 97.3: This Is Alice Music, Vol. 7 with a fluttery "Complicated." On volume nine's "Happy Ending," she still isn't the strongest vocalist in the world. But when
Lavigne is separated from studio machinery, her brash defensiveness is more convincing, closer to the bruised emotions she always sings about in her songs. ~ Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide