★★★★★
Marianne Faithfull's survivor and Grace Jones's dominatrix both went up against Barry Reynolds's austere mechanics from strength, and better men wrote their best songs--John Lennon, Iggy Pop, Shel Silverstein, Melvin Van Peebles. The music here is Reynolds's ballgame, and if Bernhard's compulsively slippery irony is strength, I'm a great artist...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
If Laurie Anderson's a musician, so's this conceptualist. Her band includes Ivan Julian and Adele Bertei, and she needs 'em: she credits composers on 11 of 12 cuts, including the boite medley (thank God for cabaret, it lets you stay in New York and enjoy your co-op), the Prince cover (for Sheila E., Apollonia, Vanity, Wendy, and Lisa), and "The Women of Rock 'n' Roll" (the story of her magic night with Stevie Nicks, who hasn't called in six months).
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Sandra Bernhard is a spike-heeled Mencken for our time, skewering the pomposity, hypocrisy, and stupidity of celebrity culture at the same time that she embraces it. And that's the secret of her success on I'm Still Here...Damn It!: When Miss Thing rips apart the Lilith Fair or spins out a hilarious monologue about her encounter with Courtney Love, she does so with a kind of spiteful affection.
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
Sandra Bernhard's 1994 album, Excuses for Bad Behavior, Pt. 1, went largely unnoticed, which is unfortunate because the album is quite funny and very musical. Bernhard's red-hot interpretation of the Sylvester classic "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," which tells the story of a young man's coming out experience in San Francisco, turned out to be a Top Ten U.S. dance hit but was about all the attention the album ever received...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
If hearing Sandra Bernhard deliver a stately, theatrical version of Cheap Trick's power ballad "The Flame" sounds absolutely delicious to you then there's a lot to love about Everything Bad & Beautiful. If it sounds repulsive, then there's nothing about this one-woman show soundtrack that'll change your mind. The love her or hate her comedienne's first full-length since 1998's I'm Still Here...Damn It! is Sandra at her most Sandra...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27