From: owner-little-wings-digest@smoe.org (little-wings-digest) To: little-wings-digest@smoe.org Subject: little-wings-digest V3 #61 Reply-To: little-wings@smoe.org Sender: owner-little-wings-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-little-wings-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk little-wings-digest Monday, October 15 2001 Volume 03 : Number 061 Today's Subjects: ----------------- CD review [Jessica Byers ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 23:02:01 -0600 From: Jessica Byers Subject: CD review This guys posts reviews to the folkmusic list pretty often. Thought I better re-post it here. I like the line about Jesse Helms... Jess A Review of the CD "Five Stories" by Kris Delmhorst - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Where in the world did Kris Delmhorst come from? Brooklyn, you say. Well, Spike Lee is missing out if he fails to biopic this artist from his old neighborhood. If nothing else, he'd be guaranteed a great soundtrack. In just her second release, Delmhorst delivers an extremely stylized set of songs. She crisscrosses the spectrum, going from emphathetic to sorrowful to bluegrassy to defiant to smoldering. On a few cuts, her unforced vocal and lyrical eroticism is enough to start Jesse Helms calling for a congressional investigation. She opens with "Cluck Old Hen." Drum-driven and backed by electric guitar and melodica, her sensual delivery immediately commands attention with a metaphor of an ill-tempered hen's behaviour and resulting life. Easily applicable to human beings, she sings: "...cluck old hen, cluck and squall, ain't laid nothing since way last fall..." "Damn Love Song" follows, depicting the fear of fully committing to a relationship. Near the close, Delmhorst sings: "...how can I lie beside you night after night and pick at the lock of your heart? when I never once opened my own cause the last time it got free, it just cut and run like a stray dog out in the street and it took about all I had just to make it come home..." Singing of the still stinging effect of a relationship four years past in "Broken White Line," she opens with: "It's been four years since the day the news fell from the sky you took 'until we meet again,' turned it to 'goodbye' and I hope that you won't rest in peace 'cause that would bore you right to tears you always made the richest feast of the dangers and the fears..." She finishes: "...it's been four years now and I find I been living all this time built myself a little world of rhythm and rhyme but sometimes I take your picture and I turn it to the wall 'cause you are still a cliff and I still know how to fall... ...it was you and me and love made three." A little pedal steel guitar gives this a country-like sound. Make that a country-like sound attached to lovely and literate lyrics. Feeling hapless and hopeless and unsure of the right thing to do or say encompass "Words Fail You." Delmhorst concludes with: "...and I know words fail you, I know words fail you, I know words fail you and I know sometimes I do too." In the motif of the emperor has no clothes, "Yellow Brick Road," probes and questions both our need for wizards and the enormous burden that puts on the poor magicians: "hey you behind the curtain tell me what it is you see from where you sit does it appear that everyone is on their knees? their eyes are wide and hopeful and the line grows at the door do you sit up there and wonder how you'll ever give them more? "Garden Rose" and "Gave It Away" present the quest for freedom and the fear of such, respectively. "Lullaby 101" is a wonderful closer with Delmhorst's last word in this song appropriately being "goodnight." Thematically connected to both "Garden Rose" and "Gave It Away," she sings of the need to not live your life solely to fulfill society's or other's expectations: "...sleep you little alibi with your reasons in a row you have turned in circles all your life so your shadow wouldn't show..." The literate crowd will love this CD, as will those who desire to be emotionally moved by music. You've hit the jackpot if you fit both these categories for this is one of the top ten releases for 2001. Track List: * Cluck Old Hen (3:17) * Damn Love Song (4:57) * Broken White Line (3:23) * Little Wings (3:03) * Words Fail You (5:22) * Just What I Meant (3:22) * Yellow Brick Road (3:45) * Garden Rose (4:42) * Mean Old Wind (2:29) * Honeyed Out (3:31) * Gave It Away (4:41) * Lullaby 101 (2:57) All songs written by Kris Delmhorst. copyright 2001 Big Bean Music P.O. Box 440283 Somerville, MA 02144 http://www.krisdelmhorst.com mailto:kris@krisdelmhorst.com This review is written by Kevin McCarthy, 9/01 mailto:celtic-folk@surfnetusa.com "Kevin's Celtic & Folk Music CD Reviews" http://www.surfnetusa.com/celtic-folk/index.html - -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jessica Byers jess913@blackfoot.net 23373 Highway 93 North ~~~ http://www.blackfoot.net/~jess913/ Arlee, MT 59821 ------------------------------ End of little-wings-digest V3 #61 *********************************