Double Standards

As much commercial momentum as Patti Rothberg enjoyed in 1996 and 1997 thanks to her hit "Inside" and her EMI-released debut album, Between the 1 and the 9, she should have added about five more albums to her catalog by 2008. But it didn't work out that way. Rothberg suffered a disappointing commercial setback when EMI's U.S. branch was discontinued, and she went from opening for Garbage and Midnight Oil to spending the rest of the 1990s without a record deal. Nonetheless, Rothberg persevered, providing her second album, Candelabra Cadabra, in 2001 and her third full-length album, Double Standards, in 2008. Rothberg has been quoted as saying that if Double Standards had come out in the LP era, it would have had the more rocking songs on one side and the acoustic-oriented singer/songwriter material on the other side. But Double Standards is a CD, not a vinyl LP — and she doesn't confine either the rockers or the non-rockers to specific places. On Double Standards, something that rocks passionately is likely to be followed by something more acoustic (or at least semi-acoustic) and introspective. And Double Standards is a creative success whether Rothberg is rocking passionately on "Retrograde," "Get Away with It," "PT Cruiser," "Wavelength," and a cover of the Pixies' "Gigantic" or making some folk-rock moves on "After the Parade," "Unconditional Love," and "Hard Times." It's regrettable that Rothberg had the rug pulled out from under her in the late '90s; had she continued to receive EMI's promotional push, she probably would have been headlining large auditoriums instead of small clubs in the 2000s. But thankfully, Rothberg's involvement with music continued — and the New Yorker is very much on top of her game throughout Double Standards.