Available from the DNA Store.

A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Mark S. Tucker
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Normally, I'm not nuts about this style of pop, but some artists craft what they do so well that it's impossible not to laud the finished product. Project DNA centers in Jimmy Blecher, a hard rocker who apparently mainlined a 10-pound bag of C&H with verathane, coming up with a sound that drags Hall & Oates, Dwight Twilley, Moon Martin, and even Eric Carmen into the '00s. This means the guy slants heavily toward well-defined hard-edged beats and jet-age Motown in complex layered lite-jazz influences and snappy vocals spotlessly clean, tunefully high registered, nearly falsettoed.

The packaging includes one of those way cool 3-D-ish moving cartoon textured plates, the backing band is tight and slick, and the production highly polished. Love Me Tonight early shows just what Blecher is capable of, establishing a catchy hook-laden cut that bops and waltzes within itself. Dance With Me (not a cover of the Orleans gem) gets into a tri-level Sparks-cum-Rundgren vocal gig that bubbles and sways, showing that the singer knows how to wrap everything around the multiple elements underpinning every track.

By the time I got half way through the CD, I realized that Project DNA was what Utopia should've done after blending into The Knack. And the singer's admonition to listen to the disc in groups of 2 to 4, I would modify to just 1, but with headphones, the engineerng being such that the music gains a whole new dimension, opening up the dance floor crowd to a much wider appreciation. Again, I really shouldn't be so enthused with this disc, but I am, putting it into the phylum of 'guilty pleasure' and smiling while doing so.