Eva Cassidy
American Tune. Hot, £13.99 The moment it stopped being
possible to ignore the Eva Cassidy phenomenon came during a
curiously flat rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow by a teenage
contestant on ITV's Stars In Their Eyes. It wasn't so much
the realisation that her template was Cassidy's version of the
song rather than Judy Garland's, as the fact that no one
thought this was worthy of comment.  | | Cassidy: posthumous success |
Having registered almost six million album sales in the past two
years - despite the fact that when she died of cancer in 1996, this
direct, unfussy, Washington DC singer had yet to release her first
solo record - Eva Cassidy's is the most remarkable posthumous
career trajectory in pop music history. This latest selection of
rehearsal tapes, demos and live performances will go some way to
answering the questions of the unconverted. Cassidy's admirably
spartan True Colours, for example, brings out the simplicity and
elegance of the original in a way that Cyndi Lauper's
over-produced squawk never could. Yet why anyone would want to
listen to Cassidy's chicken-in-a-basket rendition of God Bless
the Child rather than Billie Holiday's transcendent original is
one mystery which I, for one, am still struggling to understand. Ben Thompson
Thea Gilmore
Avalanche. Hungry Dog Records, £13.99 Like cool spring
water, Thea Gilmore's refreshingly self-possessed voice is
finally being filtered to a wider public through the soft rock of
Radio 2's playlist. Although the music press have been touting
her as the best British singer-songwriter of the past 10 years since
the release of The Lipstick Conspiracies in 2000, her first four
albums only sold in low numbers, partly because they never quite
shook themselves free of her influences: Ani DiFranco, Tom Waits,
and Elvis Costello. But Avalanche sweeps away most traces of
Gilmore's old musical crutches with the intense, white crush of
12 new songs. And she's still only 23. The single
Juliet has a jangly radio appeal gouged deeper by a wry lyrical
maturity, and a couple of anti-capitalist rock-outs make great
steering-wheel tappers. But Gilmore is most powerful in the quieter
moments, letting her icy vocals evaporate through the late night,
windscreen-wiper beat of a programmed 808. When she sings that she
loves "like the tarmac loves the kiss of morning traffic".
You can feel the pure static jolt of her intellect. Helen Brown
Alien Ant Farm
truANT. DreamWorks, £13.99 On 22 May 2002, Alien Ant
Farm's tour bus collided with a truck in Spain, leaving their
driver dead, vocalist Dryden Mitchell with a broken neck and the
rest of the Californian skate-punk quartet in varying degrees of
disrepair. Exactly one year later, the band realised they had fully
recovered, and created from scratch the follow-up to 2001's
multi-million-selling ANThology - all in 12 short months. Like,
woah, dudes! Indeed, it took only a matter of a few months
for Mitchell to return to capering form, enlisting co-producer
Robert DeLeo (ex-Stone Temple Pilots) to sprinkle cayenne pepper on
his testicles before each vocal take, in order to achieve an
extra-anguished howl. Disappointingly, then, AAF don't
appear to have matured since that near-fatal accident. One track,
These Days, loosely peddles the philosophy that one shouldn't
fret about life's petty concerns. Otherwise, Dryden delves once
more into the tried-and-tested waters of teen relationship angst, to
a sound which again studiedly bridges fellow platinum-sellers Foo
Fighters, Weezer and Korn. Great for confused adolescents, but
there's nothing here for the remotely grown-up. Andrew Perry
Natalie Merchant
The House Carpenter's Daughter. Myth America, $16.98, exc.
p&p, only from www.nataliemerchant.com Described as
"a collection of traditional and contemporary folk music",
unlike anything she's recorded before etc, the really striking
thing about The House Carpenter's Daughter is Natalie
Merchant's voice. For years it has cruised plaintively along, a
pretty-but-tough kid sister to label mate Michael Stipe without the
eccentric lyrics. Now, having finally left Warners, Merchant has
moved herself further forward in the mix and adopted a grainier,
more bruised-sounding vocal style, which suits her and this material
very well. Not all of the songs here are as ancient as Which
Side Are You On? or the Carter Family's Bury Me Under The
Weeping Willow, but subjected to the withering scrutiny of
Merchant's lightly serrated vibrato they all sound like
authentic expressions of an America, and a world, that died long
before she was born. The dominant mood is bleak but beautiful, sad
but true, and the band match this with superb precision and
restraint to create an album that is far more vivid than the
tasteful folk-rock crossover which has been Merchant's
trademark to date. The late Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention
couldn't have done it better. Robert Sandall
|
Eva Cassidy
