Sony
1999
Falling Into Place
About This Album
In the mid-'70s, British singer/songwriters like Graham Parker and Elvis Costello launched careers with music that tempered the onslaught of punk to a more melodic rock sound reminiscent of mid-'60s Beatles music and its many followers, and, while retaining punk's lyrical anguish, explored more complex emotions with more eloquent words. On his debut album, Mike Viola, whose voice most people heard for the first time singing "That Thing You Do!" in the movie of the same name, resurrects the sound of Parker & the Rumour's Howlin' Wind and Costello & the Attractions' This Year's Model, fronting the rhythm section known as the Candy Butchers, with occasional added keyboards by the Band's Garth Hudson. Viola's rough voice has much of Parker's urgency to it, and his songs, less substantial than those of Costello, are nevertheless concerned with many of the same elements of romantic disappointment and its attendant frustration. Indeed, he seems to be rewriting the same song over and over: "All day I'm thinking about you, " he sings in "Give Me Some Time," and "You are always on my mind" in "Can't We Do Anything Right," a title followed one song later by "Doing It the Wrong Way.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10)

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