This album has the unfortunate luck of belonging to a genre I can't much get into--that of the countryish singer-songwriter. There are exceptions (once of which comes later in this list) but mostly I think this type of music suffers from being so strung to a particular instrumental style that there isn't much room for interest or innovation. Blues has a similar problem, but it seems to me that attempts to experiment with it have met with a lot more success than country. Basically this album just passes me by; it's fine enough while it's one but when it's over I can't remember a thing about it. Case has a great voice, but I already knew that from her work with the New Pornographers, and while the thing with them was that her voice wasn't required to carry much emotional weight aside from its tone (which in many tracks was just wordless backing) here it has to do almost all the work, and it's not up to it. I suppose it's not fair to trash a country record for not being ambitious enough, but this in addition to not being ambitious isn't even very memorable, which might be a more damaging quality. The whole thing is too shiny, too produced: what helps similar singer-songwriters like Jason Molina and Will Oldham is that their production styles are simple, while this takes too many cues from horrific "modern country". Not my kind of thing, I guess.
MY RATING:
3.9
Neko Case - "Deep Red Bells"
No comments:
Post a Comment