City of gold
- Beautiful lies you could live in

"A pair of Warner Brothers gems from Tom Rapp and Pearls Before Swine ... City Of Gold is a return to folksier forms for Tom Rapp and Pearls Before Swine - working here in territory that's very different than some of the baroque light arrangements used on previous records. Rapp's emerging as a more confident singer/songwriter - recording in an almost Dylan-like setting, but with more of the irony of Leonard Cohen, and as always, working in a timeless idiom that's still beginning to be understood more than 30 years after its inception. Beautiful work throughout - as earthy as it is majestic ... Beautiful Lies You Could Live In is one of the most perfectly formed albums ever recorded by Tom Rapp's enigmatic group Pearls Before Swine - a record that does an incredible job of skirting between Rapp's earthy sense of the planet's passing, and his ambitions for larger forums of expression. The core group is lightly folksy - with strong use of acoustic guitar that goes far beyondanyfolk rock cliches - plus some additional arrangements that feature contributions from the team of Bob Dorough and Stu Scharf, who seem to have a habit of appearing on under-discovered gems like this one, and making them sound all that more hip! The whole thing's great - filled with beautiful songs that should have been as over-recorded as the best by Tim Hardin or Leonard Cohen - with titles that are even better, too!".

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