Category Archives: 2008 music reviews

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Duffy – Rockferry

Duffy could perhaps best be described as a blonde Amy Winehouse with fewer tattoos and a less tumultuous personal life. The Brit’s debut album strikes the same old-fashioned girl-group vibe as Winehouse’s celebrated Back to Black, with crisp modern production to match.

But such comparisons are a disservice to a young woman who has put out a record even stronger than Winehouse’s. Comparisons to Dusty Springfield are overreaching but not too far off base on this album’s extraordinary opening and closing tracks — ‘Rockferry,’ the title track, a slow builder that shows off both her vocal and songwriting chops; and ‘Distant Dreamer,’ a soaring slice of 60s pop perfection so genuine you’ll swear it must be a cover of a Ronnie Spector classic.

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Elvis Costello – Momofuku

Elvis Costello can be described in many ways, but ‘spontaneous’ is not among them. His albums tend to be high-concept and fastidiously produced. From the chamber music and literary theme of The Juliet Letters to Painted From Memory, an album co-written with Burt Bacharach. Even his rock output has followed suit: The Delivery Man was a song cycle based on an unwritten play about a southern love triangle.

The man doesn’t do simple.

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R.E.M. – Accelerate

AccelerateIt’s a difficult challenge for a great, established band (or solo artist) to put out new material. When you have a dozen albums behind you, filled with classic songs, how can you avoid the let-down of comparisons to your storied history?

Accelerate is R.E.M.’s 15th studio album and viewed in that light it is something of a disappointment. There is no ‘Half a World Away’ here. No ‘Nightswimming.’ No ‘Driver 8,’ ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ or ‘Fall On Me.’ No ‘So. Central Rain’ or ‘Rockville.’ How could there be, really? Those songs, and many others, are among the all-time greats, written and recorded over a decade in one of those creative bursts that has to have a beginning and an end.

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Counting Crows – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

Counting Crows
The latest Counting Crows album suffers from Goldilocks Syndrome — parts of it are too hard, parts are too soft and the rest is just about right. The concept here was that the record’s first half represents the “Saturday nights,” with hard-rocking and much mayhem, while the rest calls to mind “Sunday mornings,” and the gentler comedowns they provide. The idea would have worked better over two discs, but presented as one album of fourteen songs it seems less like a high concept than a purposeless and jarring shift in tone.

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Shelby Lynne – Just a Little Lovin’


I forgot to include this CD in my recap of 2008 so far. That’s appropriate because it’s mostly forgettable. Shelby Lynne, who has put out three exceptional albums of original material in the past 5-6 years, chooses to pay tribute to Dusty Springfield on her latest record and she turns in some lovely, sleepy renditions of Springfield classics such as the title song, I Don’t Want to Hear it Anymore, I Only Want to Be With You, Breakfast in Bed and more. Lynne has a great voice, to be sure, but she’s simply no match for Dusty Springfield. I discovered Springfield a year or so ago (it was Tift Merritt comparisons, in fact, that led me to her) and she simply blew me away. Her music makes me wish I was a teenager in the 60s, discovering it for the first time. Soulful, sexy, rich and resonant… it’s the sort of thing you listen to and think ‘why does anyone else even bother?’

Anyway, back to Shelby Lynne. She just chose a far too tough act to follow. I admire the attempt, and the album is a very easy listen, but I look forward to her returning to the original country soul material she does so well.