The Gospel According To Whitney
In 'Preacher's Wife,' Houston Gets Spiritual, But Vocal Pyrotechnics Still Leave You Cold

Date: November 26, 1996
By Jim Farber

From The New York Daily News
Submitted by: Larry A.


WHITNEY HOUSTON "The Preacher's Wife" Soundtrack (Arista) 2 Discs

LONG AGO, EVEN THE HARSHEST critics cut Whitney Houston some key slack. If only her material weren't so lacking in character, so grasping for mass adulation, so overblown in scope, this fettered songbird would finally fly.

Now we have ultimate proof that that's not true. On her latest album, Houston avails herself of irrefutably great material for the first time in her career, drawing on the sort of roof-raising gospel songs she learned in her youth. Yet she still winds up sounding as bionically unfeeling and blandly processed as she did on the most emotionally bald Babyface songs.

Even the music of God, apparently, can't give this woman soul.

At least the album offers fans more Whitney for the money than her last two flimsy soundtracks. Having thrown in the towel on legit solo records after 1990's "I'm Your Baby Tonight," Houston has coasted this decade on soundtracks like "The Bodyguard" (1992) and "Waiting to Exhale" (1995), which doled out just four or five tracks from the star, padding the rest with also-ran singers as low as label-mate Curtis Stigers.

"The Preacher's Wife," by contrast, trots out 12 new Whitney barn-burners, plus two remixes and a cameo shot by the star's mom, Cissy. To hedge its commercial bets, the album shoehorns in some "heartwarmers" from Babyface and Diane Warren, plus a designated urban track with hubby Bobby Brown. On that duet, Houston sounds as out of place as Barbra Streisand on a Dr. Dre record.

Not that it really matters. Clearly, this album's heart belongs to the seven gospel cuts that bring Houston back to her roots.

If nothing else, she gets the arrangements right. Axing the battalions of musicians that normally crowd her records, Houston stresses only those instruments that could squeeze onto a church altar organ, bass and drums.

She likewise sweeps away the usual gloppy production, letting us hear the Georgia Mass Choir behind her, and letting her own impressively large instrument ring clear.

Even with such improvements, Houston's voice sounds gauzy, slick and distractingly athletic. If music were the Olympics, she'd get a 10 from every judge. But when Houston performs those vocal loop-de-loops in "I Go to the Rock," her reading holds no suffering, no flaws, no life. In her face-off with gospel legend Shirley Caesar, you can really hear the difference. Caesar's raspy yowls hook your emotions, making you feel what she's felt. Houston's pretty lilts simply "blow you away," making you admire her at a chilly distance.

The result proves that Houston's previous records weren't cynical panderings. Apparently, those syrupy works captured all this singer has to give: an air-brushed voice born to skid the surface.