The Pop up Pitch

Given the cold shoulder Madonna's 2003 album American Life received by critics and audiences alike – it may have gone platinum, but apart from the Bond theme “Die Another Day,” released in advance of the album, it generated no new Top Ten singles (in fact, its title track barely cracked the Top 40) – it's hard not to read its 2005 follow-up, Confessions on a Dance Floor, as a back-to-basics move of sorts: after a stumble, she's returning to her roots, namely the discos and clubs where she launched her career in the early '80s. It's not just that she's returning to dance music – in a way, she's been making hardcore dance albums ever since 1998's Ray of Light, her first full-on flirtation with electronica – but that she's revamping and updating disco on Confessions instead of pursuing a bolder direction.

Claudine Longet's third album continues the middle-of-the-road tendencies of her first two, leading off with an oddly jaunty reinterpretation of "Falling in Love Again," Marlene Dietrich's theme song, whose jaded world-weariness Longet replaces with her own pleasantly insubstantial persona. With its cinematic background noise staging and odd ragtime piano accents, it recalls Harpers Bizarre's playful deconstruction of pre-rock standards. More successful are the straightforward bilingual version of the title track, one of the evergreen tunes of '60s easy listening; the oft-recorded Alan Gordon and Gary Bonner sunshine pop tune "Small Talk"; and a mournful, skeletal version of Randy Newman's little-known early tune "Snow" that's among Longet's finest interpretations of her career. Even better is Longet's take on the Bee Gees standard "Holiday"; Longet's endearingly pitch-poor, lispy vocals are tailor-made for this spooky, unconventional song, which arranger Nick DeCaro gives a suitably off-kilter arrangement featuring a chorus of wordless Longets between the strings and the increasingly florid piano accompaniment. Longet's next album, the masterful Colours, would benefit from even more of this gently psychedelic experimentation.