Get Ready, Wal-Mart Cashiers: It’s Clay Day

From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews, even when the new release schedule isn’t quite as exciting as it was the week before. Under consideration today is an album that Largehearted Boy has said the “mainstream media” is “fawning over”: Clay Aiken’s On My Way Here.

• “Most of the songs Aiken chose present him as a lonely and longing figure, a role meant to make him even more sympathetic to a certain sect. Essentially, they’re the latter-day equivalents to those who clung to The Lawrence Welk Show long after it lost its cultural resonance in the late ’60s. To those folks–the last ostriches of the sexual revolution–Aiken remains an island of sanity, a final bastion of proud, neutered uncool. That, more than anything in his music, gives Aiken his dire place.” [NY Daily News]

• “Aiken, who debuted on the Great White Way this year in Spamalot, sings like a theater veteran: almost too perfect, with a self-aware showmanship. But that doesn’t make pop-rock nuggets like ‘Ashes’ any less catchy, or the ballads–on which Aiken’s breathy tenor could break housewife hearts–ring any less true. With big American melodies, stock AC production and general inoffensiveness throughout, this should satisfy his army of self-dubbed Claymates.” [Billboard]

• “As much as his record company would want him to be, Aiken isn’t a crossover pop star. He’s a male Celine Dion, a nerdier Michael Bublé, a new-millennium Barry Manilow, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The sooner he embraces that, the better his albums will sound. With On the Way Here, he’s not quite there.” [Newsday]

• “It’s amazing–forget what you’ve heard before, this is a grown up Clay Aiken; no longer just a ‘ballad boy’. A little modern blues a-la James Morrison, a little uptempo rock/pop, a little jazz piano, a few ballads, a little country-crossover and even an inspirational song. And a beautifully sad song the man wrote with David Foster. Just goes to show ya what the guy can do when his record label lets him choose the songs instead telling him what to sing. The guy has good and very eclectic taste in music. If you remember Clay from American Idol, but have never bought any of his CD’s, this is the one to get!” [Amazon Reviewer “HesGotMe”]