Rating: 4/5
Review:
A good album with some great highlights
At its best this album is terrific, but I'm not sure the material is consistently good enough to warrant five stars.
Martie and Emily are fine musicians and singers, and there is a lot of stuff here which is as good as The Dixie Chicks' best - which is high praise indeed. The singing is great, there are lovely and very well-judged harmonies, the instrumental work is excellent and the production very good indeed, allowing every song to work to its best. There is a good variety and some great songs: as examples, the opener "Sunshine" is a brilliant, rocking denunciation of a smug, sneering twerp, "Phoebe" is a real bluegrass-based cracker and "Divided" is a lovely, haunting break-up song. However, I thought "Rock All Night," for example, was very ordinary and only just redeemed by good performances and production. I won't go through the whole album, but and there are a couple of other weakish songs among the real quality.
Don't get me wrong - this is a good album and I wouldn't want to put anyone off. Certainly by comparison with Natalie Maines's (to me) rather disappointing Mother it's very good and I'd still recommend it as a very enjoyable and engaging album by very fine musicians which has some (but not quite consistently) terrific songs.
No comments:
Post a Comment