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Sep272010

Monday, September 27, 2010 at 10:05AM

Cool Aural Chick Flicks

for Your Listening Pleasure.

By Rob Patterson

If there is a heaven and when/if I get there, the welcoming voice I expect I’ll hear is a woman singing. I may be a wham-bam rock’n’roll lad at heart, but it’s still cool girls with eloquent and emotive songs that get the muscle in my chest fluttering. And in this post Lilith Fair era where female singers and songwriters are a dime a dozen, here’s four standouts who sing not just for their fellow women—but also we men who love them—and what they feel and experience, have to share with us.

Sara Hickman

Absence of Blame

Sleeveless Records

She coulda been a serious contender, and bubbled just below that point but never quite broke through when she emerged back in the 1990s. And would have made a fine female singer-songwriter pop-rock champ if things had broken differently.

After all, Hickman had and still boasts the goods galore: an ample, agile, dynamic voice that has all the charm and sincerity of your best gal pal and a gift for writing songs built on a rock-solid compositional foundation with alluring hooks and smart twists and turns. Now flying under the national radar after going from major to indie labels to becoming her own cottage industry out of Austin, Texas, she’s made an important and masterful mature musical and lyrical statement that merits far greater exposure than it’s likely to receive in today’s crowded and hinky CD market. Shame, really….

Absence of Blame offers an arresting siren’s call in both meanings of the word. On the one hand, there’s stirring and fervent numbers like the swirling storm of “State of Emergency,” the chugging and punching “Edentown” and the chiming trotter “Last of a Dying Breed” that respectively address such meaningful and pressing issues as the crises and anxiety of modern human existence, poverty and family abuse and the demise of integrity with poetic grace and muscle that are free from the awkward cant and rhetoric that infects most social commentary in song.

Then there’s the simmering flirty lilt of “99%” and a warm, grateful hug on the slinky “I’m So Glad (You Came Along)” that brim with romantic allure. And she also flips the coin of love to make heartache painfully tangible within the electric flicker of “Broken” and captures lonely melancholy with muted painterly tonality on “Before You Change Your Mind.” Plus gilds this collection with its crown jewels of “Last Man in the Water” (which brings a sweet angelic smile to a tale of tragic heroism) and the uplifting choral closer “Love Is There” (penned by Grace Pettis).

Producer Mark Addison strikes a piquant balance between rich musical classicism and imaginative modernism with sturdy yet sparkling arrangements that are note and rhythm perfect in a powerful yin/yang dynamic. And the final irony of this stunning album that laments a better world while giving glimpses of what it could be is that in just that sort of state, Absence of Blame would be widely heard and celebrated as the significant, touching and healing work that Hickman’s early promise always foretold.

Ann Savoy & Her Sleepless Knights

Black Coffee

Memphis Records

The unique musical place inhabited by Ann Savoy is notable in good part due to how she keeps expanding it from an actual and spiritual Cajun homestead of Eunice, Louisiana to horizons ever more exotic. So of course it makes perfect sense to take her considerable talents as a respected folklorist and handily adept singer, musician and producer—a rare combo that’s nicely combustible when found together—to a Parisian Hot Club. And since she brings along the bayou, Crescent City, delta and Tin Pan Alley, her second revisit to the Continental consciousness and pop classics simmers with that old Gypsy black music plus a delectable swamp-bred mojo.

Her work with husband, accordionist and fellow folklorist Marc Savoy in the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, superb duet disc with Linda Ronstadt, Adieu False Heart, tributes to Cajun music like Evangeline Made and all-female band The Magnolia Sisters all attest to how Ann Savoy has become a musical force of nature. And this swingin’ platter’s prime charm is its warm naturalism that Savoy, fiddler Kevin Wimmer, guitarist/singer Tom Mitchell and accompanying rhythm section bring to Bessie Smith’s “Whoa, Tilly Take Your Time” and “You’ve Been A Good Ole Wagon,” Django Reinhardt’s “Nuages,” Fats Waller’s “If It Ain’t Love,” Johnny Mercer’s “If You Were Mine,” and her duet with Mitchell on George & Ira Gershwin’s “Embraceable You” With a voice more solid than necessarily stunning, the heart Savoy brings to a landmark song like “My Funny Valentine” hits right where the lifeblood of true love pumps to prove this a set that transcends time and its reference places to achieve cherished stature for anyone who enjoys old school made anew.

Sarah Jaffe

Suburban Nature

Kirtland Records

From first blush it’s bloody well obvious there’s something special and engaging about 24-year old rapidly up and coming Denton, Texas based newcomer Sarah Jaffe. Keep spinning the both aptly and ironically titled Suburban Nature, her second album, and it becomes many things.

Jaffe writes songs that feel like late night pillow talk confessions, kisses to win your heart or say adieu, shared stories of passion or import over hot java, flushes of pique, moans, sighs or shivers. Her singing has a dynamism that can swoop from girlish to womanly — be it assertive, raw, gentle or lusty—and swirl within the complex realm in between. And the chamber folk-pop settings shift from moments of delicacy, repose and reflection to big beat struts with a seamless coherence that supports her singing and what she says within settings that complement and enhance it all with an organic vibrancy.

Her publicity bio calls Jaffe “a truth singer,” and it ain’t no hype. The song here she impressively wrote at age 17, “Vulnerable,” captures that feeling with chilling resonance while also displaying a backbone of strength. The lyrics of “Luv” wittily spell out her words without a hint of artifice or preciousness amidst a filigree of acoustic guitar notes and pizzicato violin. Whether it’s the strum and punch of “Before You Go” or the pre-sunrise ambience of “Stay With Me” or “Swelling,” Jaffe captures vibes and moments with evocative fullness.

Originally hailing from the exurb of Red Oak on the Interstate south of Dallas, Jaffe melds an everywoman emotionality that ranges from plaintive to powerful with arrangements that bristle with urbane sophistication. And for all her musical and poetic gifts, what sets her apart from the crowd is how with every word and note she sings she’s as real as the day and night are long.

Kim Richey

Wreck Your Wheels

Thirty Tigers

One of a number of Nashville artists once with major label deals who could have defined an alternative (and better) notion of contemporary country, Richey has since upped her game as an indie artist whose smarts, song craft, quality pop/rock leanings and lack of redneck hokum should but never could have pierced Music Row’s weary and clichéd formulas. So even if iTunes shows this album’s genre as Country & Western, it’s something entirely different.

Sure, there’s a pedal steel guitar on the opening title track and “99 Floors.” But the former feels like 1970s Southern Cali country rock updated for the new century and the latter has a seductive pop-jazz sway, complete with flugelhorn that the Music City corn merchants would never let near a recording and doubtfully even know how to spell the instrument’s name. Similarly, “In the Years to Come” and the gently bouncy “Once in Your Life” both have the rolling plunk of a banjo in the mix. But the first matches it with muted trumpet and the other song burgeons into a New Orleans ragtime band mid-song break. Dusky cello graces “Keys” and “When The Circus Comes To Town” references the blues.

So, nope, this sure ain’t your cousin Bubba’s country music, not in the slightest. With a vocal approach that’s best described as effectively plainspoken and direct as she sings about love and life atop relaxed arrangements and tempos throughout, Rickey doesn’t merely transcend genre on Wreck Your Wheelsbut exists quite nicely and charmingly bereft of it in the very best ways. It’s simply damn good music that has grown up and out of stylistic strictures, rooted yet refined, and graced with a maturity that serves both Richey and the listener very well.

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