Tina Arena : Don't Ask
Daniel Kane

Tina Arena, the recipient of critical acclaim for Don't Ask delivers an album that's part Billie Ray Martin, part Celine Dion, but all beautiful pop music.

Don't Ask starts with "Chains." The haunting smoothness of Arena's lyrics in the building sounds of desperation in "Chains" makes the title track one of my favorites personally, and is a perfect fit in the Boiler Room scene of Clive Barker's "Hell on Earth."

"Heaven Help My Heart" is a slower, innocently refreshing account of the singer's plea to the gods to answers on where love is. "Sorrento Moon (I Remember)" is a beautiful love song incorporating the higher ranges of Tina Arena's voice with a sound between American contemporary and Spanish ballad, similar in many ways to Madonna's "La Isla Bonita."

I enjoy love songs from the Fifties to the Nineties; however, "Love is the Answer" sounds bubble-gummish. While I love John Lennon's "Imagine" and the implications, "Love is the Answer" proposes to singularly solve hunger, greed, deception and war, presumably simultaneously. David Tyson's keyboard arrangement on "Greatest Gift" is incredible.

"That's the Way a Woman Feels" contains pretty vocals as all of Tina's songs do; the lyrics, however, give every female the social position of nurturing martyr. Similarly, every male of "Be a Man" is given the role of a sperm-producing machine.