Wally Pleasant - Welcome to Pleasantville

All Music Guide

On his second album, Wally Pleasant retained the acoustic approach of his debut while fleshing out his sound with additional musicians, adding accordion here, saxophone there, and, on several songs, a full rhythm section. A glance at the track list of Welcome to Pleasantville should be enough to determine whether Pleasant's brand of humor-based folk is for you; in his typical quirky fashion, he's designated a full ten of the disc's 14 cuts as "bonus tracks." One-dimensional novelties such as the up-tempo "She's Addicted to Clothes" and the bluesy "Farmhand A-Go-Go" don't hold up to repeated listenings, and, in fact, a fair portion of Welcome to Pleasantville lacks the cleverness and wit of the singer's later material. Still, he imaginatively sends up right-wing politics on two contrasting versions of "I Was a Teenage Republican" and crafts a genuinely funny holiday tune with "Merry Christmas Time Again," in which he observes that "Christmas Day was when Jesus was born/I guess that woul...d make him a Capricorn." Nearly every song includes at least one laugh-out-loud couplet; it's only when Pleasant tries to play it semi-straight, as on the pop-aspiring "Only Everything," that things spiral beyond recovery. - Kenneth Bays, All Music Guide Read more Less