LINK

Sex Down (Sony Music)

If you don’t cop it as soon as you read the title, Sex Down’s visuals quickly tell you what this album is all about. On the front, a long-limbed feline chick stares over towards Link, our smooth-talking hero; on the back, said hero displays his family jewels, barely concealed by – oh horror of horrors! – a pair of cream-coloured slacks.

Link hails from that American tradition of soulful sexy R & B, but sadly he’s no Marvin Gaye, Barry White or Isaac Hayes. His voice is OK, but for the most part the songs on Sex Down are just too cliched, predictable and instrumentally weak to even hover on the border of erotica. And when music that’s supposed to be really horny doesn’t work, it actually gets embarrassing.

Link’s a real stallion man, ever at the ready to serve the countless women that are perpetually gagging for him. “Oooooh, I need to call Link,” pants a hot-sounding babe at the top of one of these largely indistinguishable tracks: “Where’ his phone number? God, I hope he’s home . . .”

In another song, a desperate woman tries to reach Link on his pager, while ‘Link’s Messages’ consists of Link playing back his answering machine, and guess what? There’s loads of women begging that he make haste to their beds!

I found ‘Watcha Gone Do’, with it’s refrain of “Would you like it if I hit you with a 69?” just about bearable, and ‘Sex-Lude’ – which is basically just three minutes of pure shagging – was, em, very interesting.

But as for the rest, it’s really pretty woeful – the last thing you’d turn on, to get you in the mood.

Adrienne Murphy