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blogcritics.org - Eric Olsen Man, there's a lot of great music out there - it drives me insane when people say "they just don't make 'em like they used to." In fact they do make 'em like they used to: right now artists are working successfully in virtually all styles and substyles and combinations of styles known to man since the dawn of recording. Last month I reviewed an outstanding tribute to Lee Hazelwood, the song auteur who has used pop styles as a palette from which to paint sophisticated, noirish vignettes of relationships waxing and waning with a startling specificity Anny Celsi has proved the Hazlewood style of pop mining in the service of a pulp fiction song cycle is alive and thriving. I popped on her new Little Black Dress and Other Stories disc last night as I was recovering from strain of the Easter mini-vacation because the cover caught my eye: a striking Hopperesque, low-horizon illustration of a femme fatale in a little black dress perched on the shoulder of an open highway, emblematic Route 66 convertible slowing down to take a look. The CD lives up to the cover: Celsi's songwriting is amazingly in command of various pop-rock idioms as she tells her tale... As with many songwriters, Celsi's (pronounced "Chelsea") voice is not great, but is a pleasant combo of Sheryl Crow and Amy Mann - I'd love to hear a troupe of allstars tackle this project, but in the meantime Celsi's original is more than good enough. Much to my annoyance, LIttle Black Dress is not yet available through Amazon, but is through her own evocative site, which also has her sharp, clever lyrics, including the first song on the album, which sets the story up from the perspective of the fool on the cover driving the sports car. |