All Too Human

Ginger Mackenzie's third album picks up where 2000's Kismet left off. But while that album featured arrangements rooted in acoustic guitar and dressed prettily in electronics, All Too Human is a more fully realized version of that slick, sculpted alternative sound. This decision proves to have both positive and negative consequences. While "Everybody" and "Grumbly Love Song" percolate with deliberately paced rhythms, electronic squeaks, and turned-down guitars, their rigid groove seems to limit Mackenzie's normally expressive voice. Where Kismet's "I Believe in Love" or "Garden of You and I" let her fly into upper registers, "Grumbly" smolders and has Mackenzie trying "not to think less of you for loving me." "Shoes" is quite a bit more upbeat, crossing chiming Sundays-style guitars with cheery, almost contemporary country lyrics about a favorite pair of kicks. It's here that Mackenzie suggests Shawn Colvin's early work in a sunny, rootsy way. But for "Tired," she returns to a mid-tempo, smoky popternative sound that features a lot of studio buzzes and whistles, but very little of Mackenzie herself — she ends up sounding like the female Shawn Mullins. All of her "do do do"-ing and coy lyrical couplets can't hide the notion that she's trying to camp out in a more marketable arena, and an adult alternative, radio-ready cover of Joni Mitchell's "Help Me" is further proof. There's nothing wrong with trying to sell a few records; indeed, Mackenzie's earlier work definitely deserved wider exposure. But it's a little disappointing to hear her straining not for high notes, but to fit her gorgeous voice into smaller and more controlled boxes.