Adam Hyzdu is a baseball player with the Pittsburgh Pirates at this writing. For the most part, he's a career minor-leaguer. A strikingly handsome guy, for those who are into that kind of thing (as I am). Regularly, he tears up in the minors, then gets called up to the bigs, where he invariably has one or two attention-grabbing big games, then returns to a disappointing slate and gets sent back down to resume his ruling of the kiddie roost. A career minor-leaguer, yep -- but a solid one.
Fisher is the Adam Hyzdu of the record business. The duo of comely chanteuse Kathy Fisher and her silent instrumental partner Ron Wasserman initially made their mark in the musical minor league that is/was MP3.com. There, they ruled the virtual airwaves with a cluster of ethereal ballads, one of which wound up on the soundtrack to the film Great Expectations. A regional hit called "I Will Love You" followed, then a modestly successful album called True North, and now this collection of -- well, uppers and downers.
The double-disc set's title refers to its "keep the hot side hot, keep the cool side cool" organization, wherein all of the minimal ballads are segregated onto a separate disc, apparently to put an exclamation mark on the point that the band can go in two directions. As organizational strategies go, it's scarcely a winner: who wants an entire disc without any mood shifts within to look forward to? Instead of a single entry that ebbs and flows like fresh water, we get one disc called "Ebb" and one disc called "Flow." (Maybe I can call their next two discs Vera and Alice.)
But as things stand, both discs have their moments; one does not clearly shine over the other. I myself am partial to the stronger Upper cuts: the risible "Oblivious," a smirking rendition of Bert Kaempfert's "L-O-V-E," and the surprisingly bouncy "Dirty Girl." It's tracks like these that lend Fisher a true sense of individuality, of having a unique voice in the sparse post-Lilith landscape. Meanwhile, Downer town, at its best, is pure Sarah McLachlan mimicry, with perhaps a touch of Carole King evident in Wasserman's intelligent piano arrangements. The brooding simplicity of "Good Intentions" and "Too Late" reflects Fisher at their best -- in stark contrast, I hasten to point out, to a misguided and absurdly accurate cover of the Aerosmith chestnut "Dream On." Guess Kathy wants to prove she can rock out when she wants to. Well, she can't. At least not in the bigs. If she wants to do covers, let me suggest some Nina Simone tracks with appropriately spare arrangements; say, "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair."
There are some genuinely good tracks to be found on Fisher's latest, but much like Adam Hyzdu's career, the primary uppers and downers going on here are the band's temporary rise to the surface and inevitable return to indie pop obscurity.
Joseph McCombs | September 29, 2002
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