Brooke White - High Hopes and Heartbreak Review

Brooke White's first post-Idol album, High Hopes and Heartbreak isn't likely to be a huge hit with the Top-40 crowd because it's not hip hop or modern rock enough.  Shoot, at all!  But, its still possibly the best album out there by an Idol alum.  There.  I said it.

The reason she finished fifth on American Idol Season 7 is not because she wasn't talented enough to be the American Idol, but because she weren't modern enough.  Channeling her inner Carole King and a whole host of other retro influences she's delivered an album full of songs sure to remain in the heads of any listener for hours.  Can't ask for more than that.

High Hopes and Heartbreak is chock full of the very things we came to love about the lovely Ms White as the Idol season wore on.  First we couldn't help but love her sweet naive charm only enhanced by that big radiant "everything is always groovy" smile. But it was her music, so off-handedly different from the slick pop-rock productions everyone else  was throwing at us that truly won us over. For my money, Brooke White was the only really unique talent that season.  Her latest album is an extension of that.

White co-wrote all the tunes except for her cover of The Kings of Leon Use Somebody, and the tracks collectively reflect the album title.

Lead track and current single Radio Radio finds Brooke getting her Carole King groove on early as she turns to the same thing we all often do when down, turning to the radio, waiting for a song to make us feel better.

She channels her inner Paul Simon with Out of the Ashes, co-written with Steve McEwen, who lends affecting backing vocals.  A stripped down tune with barely more than piano heard, she begs with her estranged loved one to meet her in the middle and rescue their relationship.

Phoenix immediately brought me back to songs by The Monkees and maybe Fleetwood Mac, upbeat and breezy as Ms White recalls the pleasures of her relative youth.

When We Were One laments a lost relationship with expressive lyrics like "I'm still not used to me/I don't know who to be/ I can't find the missing pieces on my own/Morning without you is like the sky without the blue."

White's cover of the Kings Of Leon Someone Like You proves she can, like she did on Idol, turn somone else's song into her own.  She trades that group's grunge-band guitars for a more acoustic, lighter sound, letting her emotional vocals take on the weight of the lyric.

Brooke co-wrote Little Bird with fellow Idol alum Michael Johns, and they've come up with a catchy ode to believing in love inspite of the heartbreak that often comes with it.

The title track is as modern as it gets, a disco-esque tune about a mystery man driving her wild.  It's an easy mental picture, seeing Tony Manero dancing to this one, causing the ladies to swoon.

Perhaps mocking herself a little bit, White recreates the idol moment when she started a song, then stopped and started again on Sometimes Love, then proceeds to recall another of her idols, Elton, on keyboards as she observes that not everyone who says "I love you" really means it.

On California Song, Brooke gives a full on shout out to influences America, Joni Mitchell, The Beach Boys and The Mamas and Papas, as she crafts a breezy tune relating her impression of the The Golden State.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Executive producer Randy Jackson (the first time he's produced an Idol alum) appears to have given Brooke White freedom to be herself and, because he did,  High Hopes and Heartbreak mostly fulfills those hopes with very little heartbreak.  White is an old soul with a young heart and she combines piano playing reminiscent of early Elton John with flowing, hooky melodies channeling Fleetwood Mac and Eagles and slightly gravely, emotional vocals that no doubt make Carole King proud, to give us something unique and rapturous.  At times light and breezy, sometimes pensive and reflective but always engaging, High Hopes and Heartbreak is the perfect companion to a warm summer afteroon.  GRADE: A-