CD: My 2008-2009 Cast Album Favorites

After listening to nearly all the cast albums from last season’s shows, I have three clear favorites. First, the caveats: the cast recordings of Billy Elliot and [title of show] were based on productions earlier than last season, and Rooms has yet to be released, so none of those count.

As I considered the revival’s strong suit to be its dancing, I wasn’t expecting too much of the New Broadway Cast recording of West Side Story. Besides, my shelf wasn’t exactly lacking for another recording of this score, with at least one previous version collecting a decade of dust (I’m talking about you, Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kawana!) But from the tense, insistent first notes of the “Prologue” to the final heart-tugging fade of the “Finale”, this is such a strikingly dramatic and compelling performance that the CD instantly distinguishes itself. It easily has my vote as the best of last season’s cast albums. The orchestra, under Patrick Vaccariello’s supervision, seems to play with a shared vision of dramatic expressiveness and the principal singers come across vividly, emoting in judicious scale to the music. (Note that “I Feel Pretty” and “A Boy Like That”, as on stage, are sung in Spanish – the CD booklet includes lyrics in English for newbies and fusspots.) The recording, produced by David Lai and David Caddick for Sony Masterworks, has been lavished with a degree of care that is more commonly afforded classical music than show albums – the disc is testament to the art of mic’ing and recording an orchestra. Rounding out the experience of the CD and helping to make it a must-have is a sophisticated, dynamic mix that makes exciting but always well-judged use of the full breadth of the soundstage. The mix is so expansive and kinetic that it’s impossible to listen to this album without conjuring up the images that you remember, or imagine you’d see, on the stage.
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The cast album for 13, released by Ghostlight Records, preserves Jason Robert Brown’s infectious and unfairly undervalued score for the short-lived Broadway musical. The songs may be modest, in scale with the material, but they’re generally charming rather than cutesy. I remember leaving the theatre humming a couple of them (the boys’ faux doo wop “Bad Bad News” and the girls’ ska-flavored “It Can’t Be True”) and on record they’re just as catchy and smile-worthy. Despite being written for teen voices, the songs share many compositional qualities with the composer’s other work: you know instantly from the melodic line of “Lamest Place In The World” that it’s a Jason Robert Brown song. I’ll admit I’m a bit surprised how many times I’ve spun my iPod dial to the choice cuts on this CD since its release last September. Whatever its problems on stage, 13 is a unique little charmer on disc.

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The Toxic Avenger Musical is my kind of silly-funny on stage, and it’s a hoot on disc too. The album, issued by Time-Life, has been made with a rock rather than a showtune sensibility: these mixes would have been airplay-ready in the ’80’s. Change some lyrics, and “Hot Toxic Love” could pass for an authentic power ballad from the hair-band era, and you can easily imagine John Cougar Mellencamp laying a vocal over the track for “The Legend Of The Toxic Avenger”, a tune that rips off/sends up his “Ballad of Jack and Diane”. The album, which rocks a bit harder and more credibly than the show in the theatre, puts the actors in a soundscape that is unusual for a cast album: guitar licks often share equal sonic space with the vocals. It’s a blast to hear stage pro Nancy Opel putting some rasp in her belt for “Get The Geek” while drums and guitars blare full force around her. The score has a few disappointments – Joe Di Petro has written plenty of funny, jokey lyrics but also on occasion some bum ones, and although David Bryan’s tunes effectively move things along while grounded in standard rock riffs, a tune or two is a bit too standard. But the ludicrously fun, game cast (Nancy Opel, Sara Chase, Nick Cordero, Demond Green, and Matthew Saldivar) more than make up for that on the album.