You Don't Have To Be Into the Blues to Get Into Joan Armatrading's New Album
Written: May 21 '07 (Updated May 21 '07)
Product Rating:
Pros: An imaginative and diverse interpretation-celebration of blues music - Armatrading originals all!
Cons: Loses us a bit towards the end. "Deep Down"... cut it.
The Bottom Line: In which the author subjects the entire Epinions.com readership to a revolting mental picture of himself taking all his clothes off for Joan Armatrading.
plorentz's Full Review: Into the Blues * by Joan Armatrading
This year marks the 35th Anniversary of Joan Armatrading's debut album, and as many artists who are able to sustain a career for that long, Armatrading has remained defiantly undefinable. Maybe she hasn't been as extravagantly chameleonic as someone like her contemporary David Bowie, but she has never fitted herself squarely within any genre or format, and in fact, even within a single record, she'll often touch on many different musical flavors - folk and jazz, rock, reggae, synth-pop, adult contemporary and calypso - but committing herself to none of them in her commitment to her own songwriting and her own distinctive, earthy voice (the most obvious antecedent to both Tracy Chapman and Me'Shell N'Degeocello).
This is what we who love Joan Armatrading generally love her for. (Well, that, and her unusually perceptive, gender-ambiguous songs about romantic relationships, and her understated sense of humor.) So naturally, it was a little deflating to hear that her next studio album Into the Blues would be - you guessed it - a blues record. The idea of a genre record seems so limiting, at least when we're talking about someone like Joan Armatrading.
But it turns out I had less to be worried about than I'd originally thought, for though Into the Blues is not without its straight-up blues rave-ups - like the electrifyingly matter-of-fact "My Baby's Gone" with its purposeful walking guitar parts and Hammond hallelujahs, and "Liza", a subtextually raunchy romp in tribute to a loose woman from the dark side of town, which Joan sings with base, lusty grit as if she were just another 1950's Chess Records bluesman - a straight-up blues record, this ain't. More like a blues themed record: not so much an exercise in the genre so much as a love letter to it.
And to her everlasting credit, Armatrading doesn't simply dig up a bunch of classic blues numbers for affectionately redundant covers - a cop-out that she probably could have gotten away with if her performance of "Liza" is any indication. No: every song here - including those straight-up blues - are Armatrading's. And the bulk of them are pretty wonderful.
True, she comes on like a one woman Rolling Stones tribute band (she plays and sings, like, everything on the entire record), with all of Jagger's strutting wit and all of Richards's butt nasty on "There Ain't a Girl Alive" ("who likes to look in the mirror like you do"), an indictment of narcissistic divadom that isn't without a hint of sexual admiration. But some of the best tracks here result from Armatrading flavoring her sophisticated jazz-folk-pop melodies with slick but subtle blues guitar flourishes(shades of SRV and Clapton) and deft transitions between multiple grooves within the same song.
Lead single "Woman In Love" is built on a slow-churning undertow of Caribbean rhythms and a wonderfully conflicted chorus that begins with a pleading, falsetto-tinged melody and finally swoops down into a defiant, lowdown vocal riff. She takes that combination of sexual daring and vulnerability to its extreme on the next track - "Play the Blues". On the verses, she describes her object of lust in not-so-flattering terms ("yellow teeth, gravel voice like a beaten path"), but ultimately confesses that "baby, when you sing the blues, I take all my clothes off for you" all over a slow, sultry groove that makes me want to take my clothes off for Joan. (How's that for a visual?)
"D.N.A." is a wailing bit of near-psychedelia with a recurring - and very cool sounding - heavy metal guitar breakdown; while "Baby Blue Eyes" is mandolin drenched acoustic folk with a gorgeous melody and sweet lyrics about heart-shaped scars and the like. But the best track here is "Secular Songs", an understated gospel make-out song that offers the most subtle intercourse between spirituality and sexuality this side of Madonna.
The album goes a bit long and could have used some editing, the grating "Deep Down" being an obvious cut - nearly five minutes of noisy, ill-formed riffage, lots of vocals but little in terms of words - a considerable disappointment given Armatrading's lyrical precision and insight. But in many ways, far from being an artistic departure or an isolated labor of love in the midst of her immense catalog, Into the Blues, largely due to its diversity of sound, and the versatility and imagination Armatrading brings to her interpretations of the blues, feels like a natural extension of her career. A very welcome and enjoyable one at that.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Into the Blues" by Joan Armatrading
Hypertension Records
Released 5/1/07
Produced by Joan Armatrading
59 min.
SONGS: A Woman in Love - Play the Blues - Into the Blues - Liza - Secular Songs - My Baby's Gone - D.N.A. - Baby Blue Eyes - Deep Down - There Ain't a Girl Alive - Empty Highway - Mama Papa - Something's Gotta Blow
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