Amazon.co.uk Review
For anyone who suspects the record companies will soon be releasing Eva Cassidy's ansaphone messages, it's extraordinarily pleasing to note that
Imagine is more than just a bottom of the barrel scraping exercise. All of these tracks are previously unreleased and most are live recordings, but listeners who already own
Live At Blues Alley will know just how refreshing Cassidy's live performances were. Here the quality of the recording varies noticeably from track to track, and there are a few awkward fade-outs, presumably to remove audience noise, but still the sparkling music-making comes across vividly. Check out her take on Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?" to feel a shiver of delight at another effortlessly ideal cover version, or her laid-back "You've Changed" from the Blues Alley sessions to experience more of that effortlessly soulful jazz. Elsewhere, the solo acoustic "Early Morning Rain" shows what a good guitar player she was, and if "Imagine" doesn't ever scale the heights of her "Over The Rainbow" it demonstrates she still had something new to say about a familiar standard. Studio recordings "Still Not Ready" and "I Can Only Be Me" are, perversely perhaps, the least successful cuts. Happily the album concludes with another lovely solo standard, "Danny Boy".
Imagine isn't the best place to discover Eva Cassidy for the first time, but established fans will welcome this new collection warmly. --
Mark Walker
Album Description
Album compiler Bill Straw writes: Imagine continues our tradition for showcasing Eva Cassidy's genius for mixing and matching various musical genres with an unerring sense of style that transcends their differences. Among the highlights in this collection of previously unreleased tracks are Eva's interpretation of "You've Changed", the jazz standard most associated with Billie Holiday, a version of "Fever" that is more reminiscent of the 1956 Little Willie John original R&B hit than the Peggy Lee pop cover two years later, a haunting redefinition of Sandy Denny's classic "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?", Eva's starkly moving tribute to John Lennon's masterpiece, "Imagine", her "true to the original spirit" expansion of the country/pop standard "Tennessee Waltz" and her diva version of Stevie Wonder's "It Can Only Be Me".
