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On Boys Don\u2019t Cry, the follow-up to her million-selling 2010 debut Seasons of My Soul<\/a>, Rumer<\/a> has recorded versions of tracks written by men in the 1970s. It doesn\u2019t quite have the subversive qualities that Tori Amos<\/a>\u2019 similarly themed 2001 album Strange Little Girls had \u2013 with the possible exception of her take on Neil Young<\/a>\u2019s A Man Needs a Maid, where the sense and meaning of the original are somewhat altered by its being performed by a woman in 2012.<\/p>\n Often, with its covers of songs by Todd Rundgren<\/a>, Hall & Oates<\/a>, Stephen Bishop<\/a>, Paul Williams<\/a>, Clifford T Ward<\/a>, Gilbert O\u2019Sullivan<\/a> and Jimmy Webb<\/a>, Boys Don’t Cry feels like Rumer\u2019s deep immersion in the pantheon of arcane US and UK MOR rock prompted her to construct an alternative canon of commercial tunesmiths requiring critical rehabilitation.\u00a0In almost every instance she inhabits the songs to such an extent that they feel like her own compositions, even when the titles at first seem inappropriate.<\/p>\n Williams\u2019 Travelin\u2019 Boy is one of two tracks here\u00a0by a songwriter formerly covered by Karen Carpenter<\/a>, whose voice Rumer\u2019s resembles to an uncanny degree. Not for nothing did she recently receive the approbation of Richard Carpenter<\/a> to go along with her plaudits from Elton John<\/a> and Burt Bacharach<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The object of the project was, she says, to make a record that described the solace and anguish she\u2019s experienced since achieving success and fame. Hence all the songs \u2013 including Travelin\u2019 Boy, Ward\u2019s Home Thoughts From Abroad and Flyin’ Shoes by Townes Van Zandt<\/a> \u2013 about rootlessness and longing to be home.\u00a0<\/p>\n It goes without saying that Rumer\u2019s performances are uniformly technically flawless and models of restraint. Boys Don’t Cry works superbly as a companion piece to Seasons…, the harmonic richness of the music and lush chord sequences showing exactly where her allegiances lie: Be Nice to Me is Rumer doing Rundgren doing Laura Nyro<\/a> doing Bacharach, and Travelin’ Boy suggests an album\u2019s worth of collaborations with the composer of Rainy Days and Mondays would be no bad thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Boys Don\u2019t Cry posits Rumer as a throwback, albeit a glorious one, to a bygone era, when the songwriting verities of the Brill Building were transposed to LA\u2019s Laurel Canyon. Fabulous stuff.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n