The title track of this 1963 LP was a Top Ten hit and a most worthy
Darin foray into country-pop, bearing a slight similarity to
Roy Orbison's early-'60s work. Both it and its lost gem of a B-side, "Not for Me" (which sounds rather like
the Drifters' more dramatic early-'60s hits with an overlay of
Phil Spector-ish production), were written by
Darin and arranged by
Jack Nitzsche. The good news is that both of those songs were on
18 Yellow Roses. The bad news is that the rest of the album was filled out by covers of then-contemporary rock, pop, folk, and country hits, none of them arranged by
Nitzsche, and none of which rate among
Darin's greatest interpretations. These range from decent (a jazzy "On Broadway," "The End of the World," "Our Day Will Come") to perfunctory ("Walk Right In," "Can't Get Used to Losing You,"
Dion's "Ruby Baby") to substandard ("I Will Follow Her," a gender-rearranged cover of
Little Peggy March's "I Will Follow Him" that sounds more like a run-through than a finished track). One is left to lament that
Darin did not do an album of his own material produced by
Nitzsche (who, in fact, never worked with
Darin except for the two aforementioned tracks), as otherwise
18 Yellow Roses sounds like a bit of a rush job rather than an artistic statement. ~ Richie Unterberger