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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complex, demanding and rewarding..., 6 Jun 2003
This is no easy listen... sparse, complex, often brooding arrangements coupled with Cassandra Wilson's deep, earthy voice and complicated phrasing demand your attention. Waver and you're lost. But... give this album the listening time & space it deserves and reap the rewards. Unusual, highly atmospheric tracks that combine superb singing and marvellously "distant" musical backings to weave real magic.
Cassandra Wilson's own excellent, jazz tinged compositions sit alongside a stunning set of ingenious covers from a highly diverse spectrum of composers. "Last Train To Clarksville" is transformed from a catchy pop song into a stripped-down and genuinely effective jazz vocal work-out. "Harvest Moon" slows down Neil Young's already wistful ballad to an almost painful level and, in so doing, takes it to an even higher level of gentle reflection. Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" & U2's "Love Is Blindness" are transformed into 3 in the morning jazz club classics. The vocals and backing to Robert Johnson's "32-20" are simplified to the point where only the essence of the blues is allowed to shine and, Lewis Allan's "Strange Fruit" becomes as desolate and challenging as it's horrific lyrics.
Clever, very effective and worth the required effort!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It has moments of brilliance. Worth exploring., 12 Sep 2002
By A Customer
The title here is provocative - the New Moon, the sleeve notes tell us from an Ashanti proverb, "cures disease". I see the album more in terms of being in the dark and the efforts of people to move themselves out of it.
The opening song, however, is an arrangement of that great Billie Holiday standard "Strange Fruit" and I have to say, I really don't it, which is rare for me, as a really intense music lover. The golden rule of covering classic songs is only do them if you can do them better or do them justice. This rendition does neither. The instrumental arrangements are broken, trying to create, as far as I feel it, a hard atmosphere of the streets racked by poverty, despair and broken lives. But the lyrics of "Strange Fruit" so clearly depict a certain time, space and place in black history that this attempt to update just jars. The lyrics are not flexible enough to allow for that. Billie Holiday's renditions were always musically swamped with the perfume she sung about pierced by the horror of dead bodies on the landscape. All of that atmospheric realism is completely lost here and comes across confused and so without impact. It's the kind of song that if you do it, you've got to do it straight because the words are everything. Even Tori Amos understood that in her admirable cover of it a few years ago. For me, Wilson's version is the real low-point of the whole album.
On the plus side then, the album can only get better !
"Love Is Blindness" is fabulous. This cover hits the mark. It gathers up all the deep emotion that Bono may have missed in the U2 version originally. This song really speaks of humanity, and thank goodness after the opening track. "Solomon Sang" is Wilson written and rather good. Lyrically, it touches on mysticism, relationships with the Divine, relationships with women and how those relationships can contain such divinity. Wow. Now to get all that into one song is real songwriting achievement and I take my hat off to her. It is beautiful and it is sincere.
The next track, for me, is the whole album's crowning glory. "Death Letter" is blues, pure, low, slightly funky. And I have noticed with Cassandra that it is the Blues songs that seem to unlock her full range of emotional interpretation. With blues it seems to come from her soul. This I love as so much music nowadays is sanitised and polished that to hear just one song which has some guts really makes my day. This one is superb and I would go so far as to say for me, it is worth the price of the album alone. I would really love to hear Cassandra let her soul rip on more songs of this nature, it really makes so much of her interpretative talents that, for me, her jazz renditions don't bring out in the same way. Maybe this is why her albums remain so mixed between the two styles - she needs to keep singing blues because of what it does and if "Death Letter" is anything to go by, it is powerful stuff that's going down.
From dark blues then straight into jazz with a country feel (!), "Skylark" should keep all those unhappy jazzsters who wept in frustration over "Death Letter" quite able to show their faces again !! "Find Him", opens with a nice, easy blues feel and continues in this positive vein. This is the next one penned by Cassandra and is really nice, definitely easy listening.
"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". Yes. It really is. So how does Cassandra cover it ? With panache and this song is one of those that lets her depth of emotional interpretation come to the fore. Damn good stuff. A couple of twisting jazz chords in it, just add that twinge of genuine pain and the plaintive slow country violin keeps Hank alive and well there !!
"Last Train To Clarksville". Rhythmic on the offbeats with the acoustic guitar so reminiscent of many of those long-train-journey songs to come out of the Mid-West (just listen to Melissa Etheridge for example if you don't believe me !!). I'm not sure if this works for me, not because its bad but because the offbeats almost seem to keep the listener at an inaccessible distance. Clever, but maybe a bit too clever for casual listening. "Until" is a straight forward song by Cassandra. "A Little Warm Death" is another which can get you hooked with its low, ever-so-seductive Latin feel. "Memphis" is a straight forward jazz-style song by Cassandra. It doesn't have the moving qualities of "Solomon Sang" or the catchiness of "A Little Warm Death". It may grow on me though with more listening.
"Harvest Moon" is successfully reverent with a beautiful instrumental arrangement that is almost ethereal. I like it. "32-20" is an offbeat modern interpretation of Robert Johnson. As with all her Robert Johnson covers I've heard, she does them justice without overloading them. Again, her instinct seems to come alive when presented older Blues songs and it sounds so natural and easy and genuine. This is probably my favourite of all her Johnson covers.
As a whole the album gels and there is plenty of good stuff to be found on it. My only two criticisms are that the album title doesn't seem to gel with much and the interpretation of "Strange Fruit" failed dismally.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Smooth seductive jazz interpretations., 13 Dec 1999
By A Customer
For once here is a CD by an artist that creates creative jazz interpretations of popular songs. Do not expect the usual 'jazzed up' covers that we are all so used to hearing. This is an intelligent and beautiful piece of work. Sung beautifully and backed by fantastic musicians, an essential part of your music collection.
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~ Cassandra Wilson
~ Cassandra Wilson
~ Miles Davis (Tribute)
~ Cassandra Wilson
~ Cassandra Wilson
