Dave Berry - This Special Sound Of Dave Berry (1966 Reissue) (2016)

Dave Berry's second album had his usual aggravatingly inconsistent mixture of corny pop ballads, good British Invasion rock-a-ballads, and surprisingly tough bluesy rockers. Speaking of corny pop ballads, they don't come much gushier than the vile "Mama," which did give him one of his three U.K. Top Five singles. Another of those Top Five singles, a cover of Bobby Goldsboro's "Little Things," is here too. Yet those two numbers are far from the highlights of a record whose program seemed selected in a desperate effort to appeal to several corners of the pop audience at once, with highly variable yet sometimes good results. As for the most successful tracks, "I Love You Babe" (written by folkie Mick Softley, who wrote some of Donovan's early recordings) is a grinding blues-rocker that accelerates into a rave-up; "So Goes Love" one of his trademark haunted ballads, with the same volume pedal guitar effects heard on his hit single "The Crying Game"; and "Same Game" a very good mid-tempo ballad that might have made a good single (and certainly would have been a better, if not necessarily more commercial single than "Mama"). At other points he seems to be trying on a style just for the sake of being versatile, with "It's Gonna Be Fine" sounding very much like a mid-1960s uptown Philly soul production; "Alright Baby" like Georgie Fame; and "Soft Lights" like the soppiest British romantic pop music of the era. The cover of Gary Lewis and the Playboys' "Green Grass" is another misfire, but it's redeemed by "Love Has Gone Out of Your Life," the kind of moody mid-tempo tune that suited Berry best.