The acoustic guitar-driven "For What It's Worth" (not the old Buffalo Springfield classic) highlights Barbarita's powerful six-string work and rhythmic sophistication, and "Hush Hush" is a chunky riff-rocker that echoes the White Stripes.
The second half of the CD has a couple too many ballads for me, though everything is recorded with consummate taste and skill and everpresent creativity. Barbarita plays interesting and inventive games with her vocal delivery, which can make the lyrics difficult to make out, so including them in the liner notes would have been a plus. "Fractured" and "Only Blue" are jazz-tinged slow numbers, the latter an especially haunting song about the heartache of losing communication, lovely but requiring a couple of listens to appreciate its subtleties. (Listen for David Weintraub's otherworldly electric guitar fills.)
Barbarita's rock roots push back aboveground in the two-part hallucinatory jam "The Last Breakdown," with her sharp vocal stabs pushing in and out of the mix like bursts of distant thunder and lightning. Make sure to stick around for yet more spookiness in the unlisted tenth track, a increasingly dissonant sort of raga-chant that might take you some place you've never been.
Extended samples are available at CD Baby here.
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Tina Schlieske, Slow Burn
Mixing blue-eyed soul with southern rock and a dash of country, Tina Schlieske (formerly of Sire Records' Tina and the B-Sides) presents a nicely produced new CD graced by heavy-hitter contributors like producer Sheldon Gomberg (Beck) and keyboardist Benmont Tench (Tom Petty, etc. etc.) But bland songwriting and tired-sounding singing make this CD a wallflower at the soul revival meeting.
I'd never heard of her, but Schlieske has a substantial track record and strong vocal chops - she was recruited to front Stevie Ray Vaughn's band Double Trouble in 2001, and in live appearances is often said to evoke the spirit of Janis Joplin (you can hear that influence in many of her songs, most notably "Everyday"). But it sounds as if either her heart wasn't really in this recording session, or someone was influencing her to hold back. Equally important, while Schlieske has an obvious love and affinity for seventies-style soul and for soul-influenced rock such as the Stones, Bonnie Raitt and The Band were doing three and four decades ago, she doesn't breathe new life into the classic sounds, instead using her talents only to retread them. The result is a "been there, heard that" feeling, full of evocations and lovingly replicated trappings but little freshness.
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