A few weeks back on TV, one of those pompous ad types was explaining the reasoning behind that Levi's ad where Nick Kamen gets his kit off in a launderette. Classic jeans (he reckoned), classic scenario (obviously), topped with a classic song ('Heard it through the grapevine'). Cadbury's are now using Black's sultry 1987 single 'Wonderful life' to advertise Strollers - raisin, biscuit and caramel bites covered in chocolate.
Times have not been good to Black. They haven't been particularly kind to Green, either, but that's another story.
Returning for his third longplaying outing after a three-year mooch through pop's wilderness, Colin 'Black' Vearncombe has packed Big Ted into a battered trunk, stifled a yawn and 'grown up'.
'Black' is CD pop, good in the same way that Chris De Burgh might be described as good. The sound is heavily lustred with US market polish, smattered with jazz, and geared unashamedly towards canoodling dinner party couples.
Pleasant enough voice, pleasant enough tunes - mind you, don't involuntarily regurgitate the moules marinieres during the sentimentally offensive 'Too Many Times' - but so bloody unchallenging, and without the naivety to counterbalance it.
Record shops really need a new category to cope with this sort of fluffy ephemera. How about Too Easy Listening?
(2 out of 5)
Nick Griffiths
Review - Black
Date:
1 July 1991
Originally published in:
Select (UK)