FEATURED REVIEW.........................................................25 JULY 2005
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Artist:
LAURA CANTRELL |
Although we at cheezeball.net take pains not to rush to hasty judgment, we must confess that the title of Laura Cantrell's new album got the cheeze-o-meter whirring while the plastic wrap was still intact. Humming by the Flowered Vine? Sounds like background music for elderly women who cut the crusts off their cucumber sandwiches and cover up eau de mothball with honeysuckle perfume.
But a title does not an album make (or break), and the buzz around Humming gave us plenty of reasons to remain hopeful. Praised by music critics and aficionados of every stamp, touring buddy of Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, and Patty Griffin, and backed on various tracks by the likes of Yo La Tengo’s Dave Schramm and Calexico’s John Convertino, Laura Cantrell MUST have churned out one hell of a great album. Right?
Weeell…While not as treacly as its title intimates, Humming by the Flowered Vine is still packed with enough sugar to give a diabetic pause. Consider the opening track, "14th Street," a bouncy, Judy Collins-esque stalker anthem penned by Portland native Emily Spray. "I see you walking up 14th street," Cantrell confides, "and you don't know / that I'm walkin' right behind you / walkin' real slow." As her voice soars up into dangerously heady realms, the sugar (and the backing vocals) kick in: "People said watch out for that situation / AH AH AH AH / it’s nothing more than a crazy infatuation / AH AH AHHHHHH!" The real clunker, though, comes at the end of the bridge when Cantrell chirps merrily about a moment of disillusionment: "Insisting it was love I waived common sense / I paid with my heart 'til I saw how much I'd spent." 'Nuff said.
Then there is "Bees," a sleepy Cantrell original and source of the album's grandiloquent title. Our narrator is apparently on her way to the Great Hereafter, and seeks a bit of solace in her trusty radio. But what might have been a poignant meditation on loneliness/endurance/voicelessness devolves into a cheezily extended metaphor. "No voice to say goodbye, tears on my face have dried," she serenely laments, "I'll be comin' through on that wavelength a heart can tune." Oh, THAT wavelength.
We could go on in this vein for a while, taking potshots at the pokey, ill-advised clarinet solo in "Khaki and Courduroy," or at the back-up singing (some unholy hybrid of Enya and a gospel chorus) that sabotages "Letters." But there are plenty of things to like about Humming: "California Rose," Cantrell’s old-timey tribute to honkey tonker Rose Maddox; the sunny (if lyrically inane) "What You Said"; and the spectacular instrumentation provided by Schramm, Convertino, and fiddler Kenny Kosek, which transforms the repetitive melody of "Old Downtown" into the album's standout track.
Our biggest complaint is this: No matter what the song, Cantrell's voice subsides into a lovely but monotonous drone. Even if this is an intentional attempt at artistic solidarity with the bees to whom her album pays homage, we find Cantrell's determined vocal sweetness as unsatisfying and tiresome as a cotton candy diet. While various critical heavyweights have insisted that they discern depths of feeling far below her surface tranquility, we can only conclude that her reviewers are so enthralled with the borrowed overtones of Lucinda Williams, Patsy Cline and Tift Merritt that they fail to perceive the flatness of Cantrell's own stylistic offering. One need only listen to the long-lost Lucinda gem "Letters" to sense what's missing. Gritty reverb and heavy bass make for a promising start, but where Lucinda would intersperse a throaty growl, Cantrell moseys through in the same blasé tone. Loneliness, broken relationships, poverty-induced hunger—Cantrell sounds smoothly sanguine through it all. The drums and guitars kick in during the chorus, vainly urging her toward some kind of crescendo, but Cantrell croons on obliviously.
In summation: We have nothing against charming, ethereal vocals (as long as they're not singing about angels). The bottom line, however, is this: To be interesting, a voice must contain a bit of lyrical grit. Cantrell's doesn't, and no band in the world can compensate for that. Three cheezeballs.
hl
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A NOTE ON THE RATING SYSTEM:
5 CHEEZEBALLS = UNLISTENABLE SCHLOCK
3 CHEEZEBALLS = A DIFFICULT SLOG
1 CHEEZEBALL = THE ODD FORGIVABLE MISSTEP
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