Vanessa Carlton: Harmonium : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

As the Wayans brothers' movie White Chicks made hilariously clear, Vanessa Carlton's 2002 hit "A Thousand Miles" is, like, the whitest song ever. This year, our huffy ivory-tickler delivers another spazzy, arpeggiated single, "White Houses," which is not about the real White House but does kind of conjure the Bush twins jamming in a drop-top. Smartly produced by Third Eye Blind frontman (and Carlton squeeze) Stephan Jenkins, Harmonium has the appealing empty-auditorium sound of a Fame rehearsal-session finale. And once you get past the "Chopsticks" pounds of "San Francisco," lyrics such as "I know what you did/Like a boy of summer gives his first kiss" could charm Dawson from his creek. But though Carlton's a better lyricist than faded contemporaries such as Michelle Branch, that fussy piano tends to muscle her out of her own songs. It works OK on the Tori Amos-style diary-hurler "Annie," but it's nice when, on the chorus of the boppy "Private Radio," those little hammers get some rest.