Rumer's sophomore effort, 2012's
Boys Don't Cry, is a retro soft rock covers album that finds the vocalist tackling tracks by various male artists of the 1970s. As with her acclaimed 2010 debut,
Seasons of My Soul,
Boys Don't Cry showcases
Rumer's gentle and sweetly soulful vocal style that is clearly perfectly suited to this material. In fact, for anyone already familiar with her, it almost goes without saying that
Rumer sounds a lot like soft pop icon
Karen Carpenter. However, rather than coming off as a copycat,
Rumer always sounds like the real thing and seems like she has genuine respect and love for
Carpenter and the rest of the soft singer/songwriter titans. She nailed
Bread's "Goodbye Girl" on
Seasons for gosh sakes, and
Boys Don't Cry takes its cue from that cover and not the original material written in a retro style that made up most of
Seasons. Here we get
Rumer's take on such laid-back cuts as
Jimmy Webb's "P.F. Sloan,"
Todd Rundgren's "Be Nice to Me," and
Hall & Oates' "Sara Smile," among others. Adding to the '70s soft rock vibe is the lush orchestral production from Steve Brown, who was also responsible for the sound of
Seasons. These are organic and rich-sounding tracks that frame
Rumer's voice in sparkling piano, cinematic bits of strings, rounded horn parts, the twang of the occasional pedal steel guitar, and even a poignant harmonica line, as on
Townes Van Zandt's "Flyin' Shoes." Kudos to
Rumer for not just covering the most well-known cuts from the best-known '70s artists, but also including such lesser-known numbers as
Clifford T. Ward's "Home Thoughts from Abroad" and
Terry Reid's "Brave Awakening." ~ Matt Collar