Hal (featuring Gillian Anderson)
Extremis (Virgin Records America 38599)

Something tells me I could sell this one on eBay for like $65 or something outrageous and incorrect, but I think I'll just take it on down to the regular old used CD shop and try to get a dollar for it instead. It's a decent enough CD single, but there's no ignoring the fact that I bought it simply to hear Gillian Anderson doing a song, and now I've heard it, and that's that.

The song is better than average trancey house music, not especially edgy but not noticeably slipshod either. Anderson, clearly brought in to conjure the Scully persona for thousands of masturbating teenagers, acquits herself pretty well, breathily speaking the words in a manner that almost approximates rap at certain junctures.

The big draw for major-league Gillian Anderson fans will be her Donna Summer-like panting and saying "I want to taste it!" The CD contains four versions, each different enough that listening to the disc straight through is enjoyable and has a good flow.

Really, the best use I found for the disc was tacking on the single version right after a Mark Snow track from the Truth and the Light CD on which Anderson speaks as Scully, thereby creating the illusion of some parallel universe "X-Files" airing on the USA Network instead of Fox. You know that parallel universe, right? Saturday nights on USA: "La Femme Nikita," "Silk Stalkings," The X-Files," and "Blue's Late Night Clues."

In the annals of celebrity album lore, this one is a pretty bland entry. It's not bad like a Jeff Conaway album, but not good like a Ralph Carter album; not shocking like a Telly Savalas album nor fascinating like a Sally Kirkland album.

I suppose it was hard to make an outright bad celebrity album in the 90s because production values are so much easier to fake (Eddie Furlong notwithstanding).

This one isn't the embarrassment it probably should have been, but it's not amazingly good either. I still wish they'd have had Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny record "Hey, Hey Paula" together instead – that one would potentially be the automatic #1 celebrity recording of all time.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Knuckleball