Washington Post reviews

[chris@world.std.com (Chris'n'Vickie of Kansas City)]

   Vickie here. This appeared in the Washington Post. Hope no one
has posted it already. 
               
           SINGER-SONGWRITERS WITH STUDIO'D GRACE

   The photographer Diane Arbus, who made a brilliant career of
capturing the essences of unusual people, had an insight into
eccentricity, "If that word as too double an edge," Arbus wrote,
"we could use some others: the anomalies, the quixotic, the 
dedicated, who believe in the impossible, who make their mark
on themselves, who-if-you-were-going-to-meet-them-for-the-first-
time-would-have-no-need-of-a-carnation-in-their-buttonhole."
   That pretty twisty definition might well suit such contemporary
singer-songwriter-musicians as Jane Siberry, Kate Bush and the 
extraordinary newcomer Mary Margaret O'Hara, who are foremost among
a growing group of women wielding the triple threat of studio
finesse, a range of concerns far beyond the "love song, and a
concomitant disregard for conventional commerciality. Each has
a sound and a poetic voice so personal, you might feel you'd
recognize her on the street after hearing her records.

JANE SIBERRY:
'BOUND BY THE BEAUTY'
   Canadian Jane Siberry started out making boundary-breaking pop
music-this is someone who called her first major-label release
"No Borders Here." After watching 1987's supurb "The Walking"
all but disappear (excepting the embrace of her staunchly devoted
cult), Siberry has bounded back with "Bound By The Beauty" (Reprise),
her fourth.(sic,sic,sic!) Less willfully obscure and more exuberantly
melodic, it's accessible without losing Siberry's whimsical weirdness.
  Where "The Walking" was imagined in impressionistic pastels, "Bound
By The Beauty" is brushed with earth tones and the occasional flash
of bright primary color. Nothing here screams Hit Single!, but then
again, sometimes that's a good thing. Ever optimistic, Reprise has
released the title song, a tripping, breathless melody that introduces
the album's theme, a love for the threatened Earth. Siberry says she's
coming back in 500 years, and lists the things-a forest, birds, a
river, her guitar-she wants to see when she gets back here. "And
they better be here," she warns. Sweetly.
   Siberry's songs on "Bound By The Beauty" are certainly more
singalongable than ever before-it doesn't take two plays before the
refrains of "Something About Trains" and the irresistibly charming
"Everything Reminds Me Of My Dog" are stuck to the roof of your mind.
There are still touches of preciousness: "The Life Is The Red Wagon"
sports one of those elliptical Siberry titles, but the lyrics support
the conceit. And the achingly lyrical "The Valley" is one of Siberry's
finest compositions.
   Singers certainly weary of comparisons, but there's no escaping the
vocal and instrumental influence of "Blue"-period Joni Mitchell on
"Bound By The Beauty" (there's also plenty of stately "Hejira"-style
electric guitar). You can hear it on "Hockey," a nostalgic tribute
to Sunday afternoon neighborhood games, where "you use your rubber
boots for goalposts" and someone will be left with "a scar on his 
chin forever/ someday his girlfriend will say, hey, where...?"
   The album was recorded almost entirely without overdubs, in a
studio in the middle of an Ontario apple orchard. Mixed by Kevin 
Killen (who also handled production chores for Mary Margaret O'Hara
and Kate Bush), it crystallizes the what's-going-ON-up-there? spon-
taneity of Siberry's live shows while retaining the delicacy and
intricacy of her earlier recordings.

MARY MARGARET O'HARA:
'MISS AMERICA'
   O'Hara is another Torontonian who takes introspection to its limit--on
her debut album, "Miss America" (Virgin), the singer explores her
interior state until it almost sounds like autism. Her music, which,
for lack of anything more suitable, we'll have to label with the
woefully inadequate "folk-rock", has radio and video channel pro-
grammers scratching their heads, and critics exulting: someone
definitively obscure to champion!
   But O'Hara's far more than just the latest critical-cult darling.
With diction and phrasing more indecipherable than even Rickie Lee
Jone's, she sounds like no one else, a rare quality in today's
copycat music market. And even in the unlikely event of an O'Hara
hit single, it's hard to imagine anyone successfully imitating her
awkwardness and grace, her idiosyncrasies and extremities.
   The album begins with the plaintive lament "To Cry About," in
which O'Hara sounds deceptively like a straightforward folk
singer with a raw, emotional vocal tremor. A closer listen reveals
O'Hara feeling her way carefully, almost painfully, through the
song, worrying the lines, words, even syllables, stopping in the
middle of a word and repeating the consonant over and over until
she finally spits it out. (Sounds awful, I'll admit, but it works.)
   Meanwhile, O'Hara's ace band plays unobtrusively away, and you 
get the notion that she is barely aware of it presence--much less that
someone, somewhere, might be listening to her. In fact, on a 
(relatively) un-neurotic country-tinged number such as "Dear Darling,"
you get the eerie feeling you're eavesdripponmg on someone singing
along with the radio in the next hotel room. By comparison, "Anew Day"
sounds positively jaunty, though later you realize the lyrics are 
about loss and heartsickness.
   "Miss America" was four years in the making (total studio time,
three months), mostly recorded around "Christmas in Wales in a converted 
stable." Co-producer O'Hara goes for a stripped-down live sound, but
with an elegant aural polish--this is what they used to call a
"headphone album." O'Hara's vocals are recorded in extreme close-up,
and every tic and tremor registers. There's an admirable spaciousness
around Rusty McCarthy's guitars and Hendrik Riik's bass, and
co-producer Michael Brook contributes "infinite guitar," an effect-
laden instrument that adds to the generally unsettling atmosphere.

KATE BUSH:
'THE SENSUAL WORLD'
   A teenage prodigy discovered by Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour,
British thrush Kate Bush moved from the sensual and occasionally
brilliant boudoir concerns of her 1978 debut "The Kick Inside,"
to the ambitious (what other word for a pop record that opens with
a paraphrase of James Joyce's "Ulysses?") self-produced techno-
expertise "The Sensual World" (Columbia). It's her sixth album and
first since 1985's "Hounds Of Love." which introduced her to American
audiences.
   Though she's gained a reputation for highly theatrical videos and
vivid stage performances, Bush is a reclusive studio obsessive, and
except for her duet with Peter Gabriel on his "Don't Give Up" single,
she's been all but invisible for the past several years as she's  
tinkered with "The Sensual World" in her home studio in London.
   With its swoony swoops and flourishes, and given her tendency
toward acting every color and character in her populous songs about
erotic instinct, Bush's voice is lovely, but arguably an aquired
taste. Here she plays against a musical backdrop more lushly
baroque than ever, an audio world tour crammed with special effects.
Bush plays assorted Fairlights, DX7s and just plain pianos here,
and her sidemen include guitarist Gilmour, who places a slowly 
uncoiling solo at the center of "Love and Anger." An early
proponent of world music (Gabriel's influence rubbing off?), Bush
taps into the Bulgarian trend and employs the metallic harmonies
of the Trio Bulgarka on three songs, and visited Dublin to flavor
several tracks with Celtic harps and uilleann pipes.

EXENE CERVENKA:
'Old Wives' Tales'
   As a lead singer for the seminal L.A. punk band X, Exene Cervenka 
twined her voice around husband John Doe's to make a pungent, 
plagent blend of punk and C&W. With X a mostly off-again project,
she resurfaces with her first solo album, "Old Wives' Tales" (Rhino),
which exposes her singing in subtler settings.
   Cervenka, who appears at the 9:30 club on Wednesdays, sounds
somewhat softer but still as unsentimental here, as she spins her
tales of coyote-infested backyards, apocalyptic fundamentalists 
and white trash lives and loves. There's a bit of poetry, too, a 
spoken piece with music about a "Famous Barmaid" with a big mind.
   "Old Wive's Tales" was crisply produced by X guitarist Tony
Gilkyson, who favors acoustic guitars and pianos and the
occasional X-style drum crack. His sister, New Age singer Eliza
Gilkyson, curbs her unicorns-and-rainbows instincts to sing
background vocals on the starkly beautiful "Leave Heaven Alone"
and others. The settings bring Cervenka's rural tendencies to
the forefront, revealing her shaky, occasionally unlovely sound.
But its imperfection is also its saving grace, coming off as
character.

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                            Nice eh?
                            Vickie Mapes (one of Vickie'n'Chris)