George Benson - Twice The Love (1988) [Vinyl]

In what Benson claimed was a risk, he works with six different production teams, but if diversity was the goal, the result is just the same homogenized, synth/electronic drum-laden, pop/soul sound geared toward someone's perception of what the market would bear. Benson sings well, as always, but again, the biggest problem, as has been the case from In Your Eyes onward, is crummy song material. Without Benson's improvising guitar to take the music somewhere else, all you have left are the so-called tunes -- and brother, that's not a lot. The one blast of fresh air is Curtis Mayfield's oldie "Let's Do It Again," which has a nice groove, and "You're Still My Baby," the sole instrumental, finds the Benson guitar in good shape, if not terribly challenged. "Everybody does it but that don't make it right," sing the voices on one cut -- a fitting epitaph for this album's attempt to chase the charts. -- Richard S. Ginell