Chapter 10

Rolling Stone

Corey Lyondell: At Charm’s Length

★★★1/2  

by Bentley Donns
February 16, 2001

Throughout the Nineties, the charm of Corey Lyondell—as well as that of her old band, The Toddlers—was the surprise. Her presence and her contributions to her old Boston outfit, alongside self-destructive yet shambling chic frontman Anders André, was always a pleasant jolt, the spoonful of sugar that leavened André’s murkier tendencies. One got the sense that her work ethic and pop instincts kept The Toddlers toddling longer than they would have otherwise, but Damsel Underdressed wasn’t simply a surprise, it was a bolt from the blue, heralding a powerful new female voice. In a seventeen song cycle, she took women—and quite a few curious men—behind the microphone, revealing what it was like for a determined yet insecure woman to abandon destructive patterns, chart a new course, and experiment with new love. Damsel fanned plenty of speculation, and still does, but it remains a near masterpiece, and with the close of the millennia, stands as one of the definitive rock albums of the Nineties.

The bigger surprise was the call and response of Lyondell’s Damsel and André’s masterpiece Luminario. Damsel asked what was possible, and Luminario answered.

What’s so disappointing about Lyondell’s follow-up is the utter lack of surprise. That’s not to say it’s a bad album—any Lyondell release is bound to have its charms. The opening track, Startled, is an excellent rock track, but the two following it seem perfunctory, as if to burnish her rock credentials and reassure any lingering Toddlers fans that she hasn’t veered too far into confessional singer-songwriter territory. The album, which she co-produced, is overlong, and the bloat is felt on experimental tracks like Groundswell and the turgid Sphere. It’s a solid outing, and gems like the haunting Glimmer and the caustic Prom Queen For A Day give glimpses of the brilliance that marked Damsel.

Artists have a lifetime before their first creation, and sometimes that creation is fully formed, the statement pure and near perfect. Then there’s the follow-up, which has a gestation period of a year or two, and it needs to be squeezed in between promotion and touring. At Charm’s Length is respectable but not revelatory, and that’s to be expected. Which is the problem. Lyondell meets expectations here instead of obliterating them.