Published on Apr 17, 2000
Occasionally, when an artist breaks out into the big time, a
record company releases work from their past. Even more
occasionally, it’s good. It’s more likely, however, the work is,
shall we say, substandard. It’s a crapshoot where the odds are
stacked against you.
Because of this, I didn’t pick up Meredith Brooks’ first CD,
See It Through My Eyes, until I found it used and tres
cheap. Despite the fact I’m a big fan of both her
Blurring The Edges and
Deconstruction CDs, I was, frankly, a touch nervous about
this one. And guess what, gang? I was
right to be nervous. Meredith, I love you, but this is
frankly
awful
.
Despite its 1997 release date, these songs were originally
recorded in 1984 by a much younger and much less skilled Brooks,
and it shows. Boy, does it show. The entire album feels like a
Missing Persons or Scandal knockoff, complete with shallow power
ballads and drum machines. At any moment, I expect to hear Debbie
Gibson’s vocals kick in rather than Brooks’, and in fact her
delivery is immature enough compared to her nineties work you begin
to notice
she sounds like Debbie Gibson in places.
Perhaps the most painful element is that Brooks’ guitar playing
is still
good through this morass of early MTV cliches — when you
can hear it, which isn’t often. But the songs are so bad it’s
almost impossible to appreciate it. There are occasionally moments
where Brooks’ attitude and style shows up for a moment, but they’re
few and far between. Most of the time, this is just a reminder of
why it sucked to be a female rocker in the eighties. This album
probably isn’t even Brooks’ fault. I couldn’t find any information
anywhere on it, but I suspect these babies are demo tapes that
someone decided to make a buck off of.
There are a couple of barely-acceptable tracks. “Pick It Up” and
“The Look” are occasionally interesting, as straight-ahead as rock
gets under these circumstances. “Video Idol” has a mildly hooky
melody and keyboard line. But mostly,
See It Through My Eyes is a trite collection of really bad
eighties cliches, a stale confection of bad cheese and boring
filling. It’s a record company (and remember, all A&R men must
die) sucking off an artist’s current success like some sort of
giant, bloated, timetraveling leech.
Meredith Brooks deserved better than this, and eventually (some
15 years later) she’d get it. However, unless you have some insane
desire to torture yourself, avoid
See It Through My Eyes like the plague.