Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez's danceable "Sweet Tequila Blues" makes you feel like you're at a barn dance. Taylor, the legendary songwriter of "Wild Thing" and "Angel of the Morning," is enjoying a rejuvenated career as part of this duo.
An exception to the album's theme of original songs in old-fashioned styles is new grass legend Tim O'Brien's stubbornly, and refreshingly, traditional arrangement of "House of the Rising Son." Alison Brown's gently virtuosic instrumental "Deep Gap" leads into the gospel-like and utterly charming "Prayer For My Friends" by Terri Hendrix, which is that rarity, a song about praying that doesn't annoy me.
I don't get Josh Ritter's appeal, but he's popular and he's here. Ruthie Foster - whose CD Runaway Soul I also bought with my own money - closes the disc. Foster can teach us all a thing or two about injecting soul into an acoustic arrangement.
The abiding impression one gets from this CD is "pretty, but safe." Nothing wrong with that - the collection is very pleasant and does what it sets out to do. If you don't listen to this kind of music much, it could certainly turn you on to some fine artists.
Shea Breaux Wells, Piece of the Light
Shea Breaux Wells mixes up torchy jazz and contemporary piano pop, but she seems more inspired, both as a singer and a songwriter, in the former language. Her strength as a vocalist is in the fine points of melodic movement called for by jazz chords; her voice doesn't have the bright colors needed for pop, and the songs she writes in the latter style are tame and prone to prosaic, new-agey lyrics. The pulsing "The Keeper" is something of an exception.
I would have enjoyed a whole album of the jazzier songs like "Soothe Me," "Finest of Lies," her snaky version of "Always Something There to Remind Me," and her re-imagining of the Beatles' "Blackbird," in which her velvety voice cushions an exciting piano solo from Noam Lemish.
Listen at her website or at CD Baby.
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