Album Review: Texas - Texas 25

Texadermy (noun): Removing the innards of perfectly functioning songs and stuffing them with deadened fluff.

Sharleen Spiteri’s brigade carved out a respectable corner of AOR with two decent career surges over 26 years. This should make for an admirable hits collection, but instead, by teaming up with New York collective Truth & Soul, they’ve opted to gut the likes of I Don’t Want A Lover, Black Eyed Boy and Say What You Want and re-present them as soul/country muzak that Sheryl Crow would reject for being too bland. Texas 25 stares vacantly towards a lifeless new direction.