East of Angel Town (Bonus Track Version)

Peter Cincotti's 2009 release East of Angel Town is the vocalist/pianist's first album since his 2004 sophomore effort, On the Moon. That album found the onetime neo-crooner moving from jazz standards to more contemporary pop-oriented original material. East of Angel Town finds Cincotti having fully made the crossover move, and fittingly the album features production by crossover Svengali David Foster as well as Humberto Gatica and Jochem van der Saag. Foster has helmed similar efforts from such genre-bending artists as vocalists Josh Groban and Michael Bublé. That said, neither of those artists has ever gone quite as far toward the pop/rock vein as Cincotti does here. Still displaying a knack for jazz and blues-inflected melodies, Cincotti nevertheless dives headlong into the rock world. Tracks such as the sharp-tongued and urbane leadoff title track, with its hard-edged guitar backgrounds and lyrics detailing the superficial lives of N.Y.C. scenesters, bring to mind the theatrical '70s singer/songwriter pop of both Rupert Holmes and Steely Dan. In fact, Steely Dan seem to be the biggest touchstone for Cincotti here. Which isn't to say he rips off them off — on the contrary, as the production on Angel Town is so thoroughly modern, you'd never mistake it for classic Steely Dan. Nonetheless, Cincotti's mix of jazz, blues, and crisply drawn singer/songwriter lyrics clearly draws much inspiration from Steely Dan and other eclectic artists of the '70s and '80s, including Elton John and Billy Joel. Keeping in that tradition, it's not just the rockers, but primarily Cincotti's ballads that really stick in your ears, with both "Lay Your Body Down (Goodbye Philadelphia)" and "Cinderella Beautiful" delivering a warm, melancholy afterglow vibe. Similarly, "Man on a Mission" is a perfect soft rock ballad. Taken as a whole, East of Angel Town is a somewhat sprawling and stylistically varied pop album that finds Cincotti meandering all over the creative map. However, in the world of crossover singer/songwriter pop that's actually kind of the goal, and in that sense Cincotti is right on course.