From: owner-full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org (full-fledged-strangers-digest) To: full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org Subject: full-fledged-strangers-digest V4 #33 Reply-To: full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org Sender: owner-full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk full-fledged-strangers-digest Saturday, March 3 2001 Volume 04 : Number 033 Today's Subjects: ----------------- New Dress Review from Neil Finn list [Tal Hurley ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 16:37:29 -0800 (PST) From: Tal Hurley Subject: New Dress Review from Neil Finn list From the Neil Finn email list: There have been a couple of posts about Neil's vocal pairing with Jonatha Brooke on her new album, Steady Pull. after spending the weekend listening to the record and to the song Neil appears on ("New Dress"), i wanted to give some thoughts. contrary to a previous list member's thoughts on this song, i feel like Neil's vocal is mixed very evidently. this is no "Every Day Is A Winding Road" role, hiding behind Sheryl Crow and singing the same note for the duration of the chorus, over and over and over again. (that always smacked of Sheryl feeling like she owed Neil a "favor" after their tour together and threw him a meager part that did nothing but give him a forgotten album credit.) Jonatha is clearly familiar enough with Neil's body of work (this is an understatement - -- she gushes about Neil almost as much as Shawn Colvin does) that if she troubles herself enough to invite him over to Bob Clearmountain's house to sing, she makes sure that we know he's there. and in fact, as proof of this (and testament to her appreciation), she goes to the trouble of listing his name on the CD box. while several well-known musicians appear on Steady Pull, only two songs specifically list the artists as guests on the *outside*: "Steady Pull w/ Michael Franti" and "New Dress w/ Neil Finn." from a "status" standpoint this is a nice honor ... kind of the equivalent of getting the "and" before your name when you guest-star in a TV series. very cool. the song itself, like a lot of the music on this album, is a little stretch in a different direction. while Jonatha may not be taking leaps and bounds away from her previous sound the way Neil has over Try Whistling This and One Nil, she clearly is trying some new things, becoming more comfortable in her role as a solo artist and fashioning a sound that takes her a several steps away from the waifish, wispy female singer-songwriter schtick that a few of us were frankly getting a little bored with. "New Dress" is a good example, a song that enters with a thundercrash of dark, low sounds and, as Jonatha solos on the verses, appears to be four minutes of brood. but the chorus blows up that assumption when it breaks out into bright light. even after hearing it several times, i'm *still* taken by surprise when i figure out, some one or two lines into it, that Jonatha departs from her lower register used for the verses and sails up to take the higher vocal; Neil gets the lower harmony part. the blend is so perfect as to almost be seamless. Bob Clearmountain has done a nice job of removing some of the "reedier" qualities of Neil's voice in the effort to achieve this great mix. the chorus is a beautifully seductive lyric that mimics the musical idea of shedding the past and starting over with someone new: cuz you take me to the window, love and you leave the light on you take off my uniform and say baby put this new dress baby put this new dress on it's a song full of haunt and hope. really quite wonderful. vocally, the chorus ranks among the best Finn Brothers two-parters ... i couldn't help but smile through it, and by the second time it comes along, i could sing the melody. by the third, i'd picked out the harmonies as well. and i *want* to sing it. while it's a very good track, it's not my favorite on the record--and yet it's the one i can't stop singing over and over. my only complaint is that Jonatha sets herself up for a gorgeous, shining instrumental solo of some kind as she comes out of the bridge ... but opts instead to return immediately to the chorus and ride the song out. it does get her in and out of the song a lot faster, but it left me feeling like something is missing. still, a Neil Finn fan can hardly complain about such a petty concern; it's her against me, and the woman with the record deal and years of professional experience wins out! Jonatha used Neil's instrument in just the perfect way, and what's even better is that she advertised it well. if such attention brings a few more Neil fans to the fold, we can safely assume that Jonatha's work here is done. (that was the whole reason for having Neil guest, right -- to build up his status and once again draw attention to the US music industry about this much-ignored artist? *grin*) ten good days, mlb Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! 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