Singin' in the Kitchen

Omni's 2008 reissue of Singin' in the Kitchen pairs the album with a wealth of bonus cuts, including ten of the 12 tracks from the 1967 gospel LP This I Believe (missing are "Chicken Every Sunday" and "Steal Away," both from the second side of the album), three cuts from the 1970 album The Real Thing, "Poison Red Berries" from 1973's I Hate Goodbyes/Ride Me Down Easy, which was Bare's first album upon returning to RCA after a stint at Mercury, plus the 1969 single "Which One Will It Be," never before on CD. If anything ties together the 28 songs on this CD it's that phrase, "never before on CD," as nothing here — not even the 1974 album that provides the occasion for this disc — has shown up on CD. Frankly, it's a bit of a relief to have Singin' in the Kitchen buttressed by so many other songs, as the singalong album is a bit of an acquired taste — you either love the rambling, with-the-family feel or you most decidedly don't — and the rest of the music here is better Bare. This I Believe is a varied gospel album, feeling more like a Nashville pop LP than a spiritual record — of course, it helps that it includes such country-pop tunes as "Less of Me," best known as a hit by Glen Campbell, and a sprightly take on Hank Williams' "I Saw the Light" — and the handful of stray tracks that round out the release are good examples of Bare's gently progressive country-folk. As good as some of these cuts are, this entire CD is a bit of a hodgepodge, with the only commonality being the music's previous scarcity, but that's alright: this is for the devoted anyway, and they'll be happy to finally have all this on CD, even if they don't wind up listening to it all that much.