Victim of the Joke?: An Opera
is a concept album of sorts, the songs linked together by dialogue based around a thin romantic plot. The tunes (including both originals and surprising covers of
the Beatles
'
"Help!"
and the
Tin Pan Alley
tune
"The Masquerade Is Over"
) are OK, but not special, treading closer to
pop-soul
than the grittier tone of many of
David Porter
's '60s compositions with
Isaac Hayes
.
Porter
's voice, again, is OK but unremarkable. While the construction of the LP was a laudably ambitious outing by early-'70s
soul
standards, the results weren't all that interesting; indeed, the thematic "concept" (of a typically rocky love affair) that drives the album is pretty simple and innocuous. ~ Richie Unterberger