1. Make Me Know It
2. Fever
3. Girl Of My Best Friend
4. I Will Be Home Again
5. Dirty Dirty Feeling
6. Thrill Of Your Love
7. Soldier Boy
8. Such A Night
9. It Feels So Right
10. Girl Next Door
11. Like A Baby
12. Reconsider Baby
This guy again? Oh great....
I can't even go two albums in this decade without running into this asshole. Anyway, Elvis was back from 2 years in the Army, where he was drafted during peacetime in a government conspiracy to destroy rock music or something. That may not seem that long now, but back in the 50s you were expected at least two albums a year, so this probably felt like Chinese Democracy-levels of waiting.
Unfortunately those two years didn't improve Elvis any. Although his voice has improved a bit since the debut album, the material hasn't much. Where his first album was a thrown together mess of country and rock, the songs on this album consistently fall into a bland rock-esque middle of the road pop category. It rocks in a couple places, but not very hard at all, and certainly nothing that inspires more than a passing interest. Unfortunately, this album falls into what is often called the nadir of rock music, a period that lasted from the late 50s to the early 60s. Many of the leading stars in the first generation of rock were incapacitated in some way: Elvis was drafted, Little Richard had (temporarily) quit the business to become a preacher, Chuck Berry was arrested for transporting a minor across state lines, Jerry Lee Lewis was embroiled in a scandal in which he married his 13 year old first cousin, and Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper were all killed in a plane crash. Not a very rockin' time. Aside from surf rock groups, the majority of popular music was made up of excessively bland pop music that had the energy of a dead fish.
This album is no exception. Although there are a couple of numbers that have a flicker of life in them, most of this album is largely forgettable early 60s pop. 'Fever' is an interesting jazzy-type number, but it's also a near carbon copy of the Peggy Lee version, so I can't praise it all that much. 'Such A Night' is easily the best song on the album, with Elvis turning in a spirited (and rather sexual!) vocal. He does an okay job with the material he's given, it's just that the material sucks. And the instrumentation is awash in those annoying 1950s-style backing singers. There's nothing really groundbreaking or indeed noteworthy about this album, and I thoroughly resent its placing in this list when a Chuck Berry album could've easily covered for it. 5/10
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