Having listened to ["Playing Possum"] more than half a dozen times now, what clear and precise thoughts does it provoke? The answer is, to the best of my ability, that there's little provocation at all, beyond, that is, the picture on the cover….

The songs within comprise music of controlled sensuality, but the mood is too languorous to generate much real heat. Carly Simon's a tease and a society broad. You knew it with "You're So Vain," but on "Playing Possum" she extends that role, even to the point of including a song called "Are You Ticklish."… It's tempting to think of her as Joni Mitchell without depth; even her sensuality seems mere artfulness, the refined and coolly calculated product of the debs' finishing school. Although the title cut is really a reference to the present attitude of sixties activists, it can be interpreted as expressing the emotional...