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Carly Simon – 'Moonlight Serenade'
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• Carly Simon

"Moonlight Serenade." Carly Simon. Columbia. 11 tracks

Grade: C

Come on, Carly. Just because you're 60 and performing songs from the FDR years doesn't mean you can't frisk it up a little. Standards by George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and the like aren't delicate antiques. They're sturdy structures that can support a little risk-taking.

Alas, the estimable Simon veers perilously close to Rod Stewart's snooze-inducing "Great American Songbook" work on her fourth album of standards, "Moonlight Serenade." That's bad news for music lovers who believe this music can still sparkle (Diana Krall, anyone?), good news for folks who are content with soothing background music for a candlelit bubble bath.

Simon's dusky voice, to be fair, is better suited to the material than Stewart's rasp. (Her range has deepened with age, and she's now somewhere south of Bea Arthur in a coal mine but still quite sexy.)

If blame must be assigned, turn to her old producer, Richard Perry, who helped oversee Simon's most popular period in the early- to mid-'70s and then went on to work on Stewart's "Songbook" trilogy. The arrangements (crucial for material like this) are the same sort as on the Stewart: lush, sedate and soporific, easy-listening tunes in a never-ending tea dance, with little swing or sense of fun. Fill up the tub, light the candles, hit play and never mind what could have been.

— Phil Kloer