Steve Miller
was always catchy and tuneful, but he never turned out an unabashed
pop
album until 1982's
Abracadabra
. This isn't just
in construction, it's pop in attitude, filled with effervescent melodies and deeply silly lyrics, perhaps none more noteworthy than the immortal couplet "Abra-Abracadabra/I wanna reach out and grab ya." Those words graced the title track, which turned out to be one of his biggest hits, and if nothing else is quite as irresistibly goofy as that song, there still is a surplus of engagingly tuneful material, all dressed up in the psuedo-
new wave
production so favored by AOR veterans in the early '80s. All of that may not make this one of
Miller
's definitive albums, especially in the view of hardcore space
blues
heads, but it's pretty damn irresistible for listeners who find
"Abracadabra"
one of the highlights of faux-
AOR. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine