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With his trademark bohemian Lower East Side get-up of Kangol-style cap, sweatshirt, faded jeans, converse sneakers, and sprouting a beatnik soul-patch, Frank Grimaldi looks the NYC beat-poet part. Even the cd’s artwork--complete with real life graffiti, brick apartment buildings and litter-strewn back alleys--speaks of his original stomping grounds.

For the millions of gay men (this writer included) who left their small hometowns for the freedom, safety, and perhaps purposeful anonymity of big city life, Balance's opening track “City Walls" is a particularly poignant anthem. The lyrics weave queer life and city life together in a day-by-day narrative tapestry that’s immediately recognizable to queer urban dwellers everywhere.

The fast pace and rude attitude of stereotypical New Yorkers is aptly captured in the bitchy, rockin’ “Shut-up and Listen.” This song literally flies by in less than two minutes time, yet epitomizes the brashness of citified lovers quarreling.

That certain town-without-pity, lost-in-the-city, ships-that-pass-in-the-night loneliness one can feel in the struggle to find meaningful love in a big, tough town, is expressed simply and beautifully in male-to-male ballads like “The Right Thing,” “One Night Kiss” “Love is Not the Same” “Blueprint” and “The Same Mistake.”

It is the sheer variety of love songs on Balance that make Grimaldi really shine. Each is written in a different rock/pop style, and each is made even more moving by Grimaldi’s own understated way with words and music. He has the ability to deliver lyrics that appear naïve, protected and matter-of-fact on the surface (the typical hardened New Yorker), but reveal an almost unbearable vulnerability and emotional honestly underneath.

Although Grimaldi’s romantic ballads are clearly gay-male identified and same-sex directed, they are so well written, mature and sincere as to have a universal appeal to listeners of any sexual-orientation.

In the cabaret/blues tune “Bad Habits,” we are given cosmopolitan world-weariness in the tradition of classics like J. Kander’s “New York, New York," Billy Joel’s “New York Frame of Mind," and with its gay hustler lyrics, perhaps a naughty touch of Dietrich ala “Black Market” and “Laziest Gal in Town” thrown in: “Cheap talk and cocktails/smoked all my cigarettes/got three loaded ashtrays/and a mountain of regrets."

Grimaldi might sing about regrets, but his fans won't--at least not after picking up a copy of Balance.

On February 7th, Frank Grimaldi offers the first live NYC club Balance tour concert at the legendary C-NOTE Blues/Jazz Bar in the East Village, NYC.

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