Julian Lennon: Photograph Smile

The word on the street is that Photograph Smile, released abroad last year but just now finding its way to America, finally makes a decent case for Julian Lennon as a musician. In the past, he's been accused of making albums too derivative of the work of his famous father, and the evidence against him has been pretty strong. The minor 1991 radio hit "Saltwater," for instance, was as poor an imitation of "Strawberry Fields"-era Beatles as has ever been recorded. Even Lennon himself seems to acknowledge his past mistakes in the liner notes to Photograph Smile, stating that, "For me, this truly feels like the first Julian Lennon album." Well, the word on the street isn't exactly right, and if this is the first true Julian Lennon album, it only confirms that his marginal status has been justified all along. A maudlin, string-sopped, if not especially offensive, collection of treacly lyrics and forgettable melodies, Photograph Smile can serve alongside half-brother Sean Lennon's Into The Sun as proof of the law of diminishing genetic returns. It does have precisely two highlights: The opening track, though it sounds like someone working his way through most of the highlights of the Beatles' later work, is listenable enough, and the title track isn't bad. Those songs aside, Photograph Smile blands itself into irrelevance. It's nothing for Lennon to be embarrassed about, but it's not much to be proud of, either.