Actually the song that has been running through my head most of the times I played Black Russian is “’Cause I Love You”. Black Russian are professionals who put their heart and soul into this album. The music stacks up well with the other albums of that era, and truly, “Mystified” should have been a hit single. As with most of the UARB’s and UARA’s that I write about, I love the whole album, and it is difficult for me to single out particular songs. My personal favorite though would have to be “Leave Me Now”, a plaintive ballad that is as compelling as any that I can remember from the 1980’s.
Most of the posts that I found on the Internet seem more interested in the Black Russian story than in the music. Writing for Orange Coast magazine of Orange County, California, Keith Tuber stated in an article entitled “Black Russians Mix Well Socially”: “The problem with the album, which is musically interesting and contains an assortment of classical chord structures – a manifestation of the trio’s early training – is the lyrics. Only ‘’Cause I Love You’ is entirely written by one of the bandmembers (Serge [Kapustin]), while the others are collaborations. To my mind, the words are vastly inferior to the music.”
Along with links to two of the songs, “Move Together” and “’Cause I Love You”, the blog called The Homoerratic Radio Show says of the album: “Unfortunately, most of their songs sound like numbers cut from the final version of a mediocre Broadway musical. Still, the group’s got an interesting story, and these two songs aren't that bad.”
(April 2015/1)
