Scott Bolton

Set Me Free (Independent)

If the sleeveless, fishnet shirt Scott Bolton sports on the cover of his debut CD, Set Me Free, doesn't tell you all you need to know about the singer's target audience, the portrait inside the booklet leaves little room for doubt: underneath a cowboy hat and handlebar moustache, Bolton's black-leather vest sits atop an otherwise bare torso, revealing his pumped-up pecs and ripped abs. This disc was designed to be a soundtrack for late nights in loud rooms packed with shirtless, tattooed boys gyrating to Bolton's high-energy covers of tunes made famous by the Supremes ("You Keep Me Hanging On"), KISS ("I Was Made for Loving You"), Ultravox ("Vienna"), and Blondie ("Atomic").

Bolton is a capable singer, in a musical-theatre sort of way (as befits his Broadway background), but the standard-issue early-'90s acid-house beats employed by producer and programmer Lin Gardiner are notable mostly for their lack of originality. On the other hand, these songs are slick and bouncy enough to fill the dance floor at the sorts of nightclubs where "YMCA" and "I Will Survive" can still cause a stampede. Moreover, Bolton is clearly doing it all for the love of singing alone, without monetary gain in mind: he is donating all profits from retail sales of Set Me Free to the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation.

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