Pat Boone's long string of high-caliber ballad albums comes to an end with the arrival of
The Touch of Your Lips in early 1964. At first look, the album offers some vital ingredients that would suggest a productive outcome: lush love songs,
Gordon Jenkins' skillful and creative arrangements, and
Boone's balladeering expertise. But what began as an eagerly anticipated project ends uneventfully. The concept of using
Jenkins ("the
Tchaikovsky of his medium") to write arrangements was, in itself, not a bad one. But for all the beauty and intensity of feeling he weaves into his work, there is throughout the album a lingering heaviness, a continuous somber overtone -- that makes it an uninvigorating, even tiresome, listening experience. If
Jenkins had incorporated a measure of lightness, airiness, and (most importantly) joy into his arrangements, the album may well have succeeded. Listening to these tender love songs, you can't help but feel that love needn't be so formal and grave.
The Touch of Your Lips presents an uncommon instance of the total being less than the sum of the parts. A listen to any one of the 12 tracks would be not at all unsatisfying. But when taken as a whole, the album's perpetual and accumulating heaviness draws it down and does not well serve love's uplifting mission.
Jenkins' style of arranging would have worked well for these compositions as a purely instrumental "mood" album; however, when blended with
Boone's sensitive but correspondingly melancholy vocals, the result can only be less than brilliant.