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Joan Osborne is about to find out if there is life for
her in music after her 1995 smash hit album Relish. Her
1995 alternative folk single and album catapulted her into the
spotlight, but she has been floundering ever since the winds in
her sails died down. She has turned a new leaf and moved on with
her life, straightening her curly cue locks, signing with a new
label, and moving into country music.
Her debut album with her new label Vanguard Records is entitled
Pretty Little Stranger. The record is country music with
an exponential factor. Produced by Steve Buckingham (Dolly
Parton, Mindy Smith, Ricky Skaggs) the album
features guests Alison Krauss, Rodney Crowell, Vince
Gill, and Sonny Landreth. From soft country ballads
to toe tapping mid-tempos, the album pays homage to country music's
Americana and folk backgrounds. Opening with a country western
mist on the title track, the album proceeds in that frame with
bales of countrified riffs and pensive storytelling. "Holy
Waters" is a vocal and acoustic guitar melody with shadows
of Dido and John Prine. The sparseness in the melodic
folds is filled with Osborne's vocal spreads. Her vocals cover
distance as expedient as an opera singer, only more folk keyed.
The bluesy guitar phrasings on "Brokedown Palace" are
soaked in Osborne's breathy vocals which carry a Bonnie Raitt
inflection. The treatments of the slide guitar on "What You
Are" skies across the melody making spokes of light. Osborne's
songs rely on the slide guitar to enhance the décor of
the melodies showing up on several tracks including "Dead
Roses", where guitarist Sonny Landreth takes the reins and
discharges spurts of upbeat pulses and dynamic shifts making it
the most excitable track on the album. The massaging fingerpicking
on "Shake The Devil" are engulfed in a country folk
stylizing while "Time Won't Tell" has more of a bluesy
mood with Osborne and Vince Gill's vocals harmonizing through
the verses. The lyrical content is typical of a country soul with
sullen phrases like "You never see the road you didn't take/
Never feel the love you failed to make/ To never know it could
be your worst mistake/ Time won't tell."
The folk rock scope of "Who Divided" has an Annie
Lennox boot kick in the groove giving the mid-tempo a hard
edge in the infectious dance beat. The bluesy tone of the keyboards
softens the stomp in the kicks. The tenderly brushed drum strokes
on "After Jane" compliment Osborne's easy going vocal
style and have a recurrent presences through the album along with
the squeezing slide guitar hooks. Osborne displays a comfortable
fluency in her vocals as the songs are fitted to her key.
Osborne's latest outing Pretty Little Stranger renders
pretty country melodies gilded with the sleekness of her vocals.
Many of the tunes are similar in scope to Jewel, Blaine
Larson, and Julie Roberts, as Osborne concentrates
on one type of vocal melody and country sound, but it certainly
lands her in country music's stable. Maybe now her sails have
recaptured a bit of that wind she lost.
-Susan Frances
Track listing:
1. Pretty Little Stranger
2. Holy Waters
3. Brokedown Palace
4. What You Are
5. Shake The Devil
6. Time Won't Tell
7. Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends
8. Who Divided
9. Til I Get It Right
10. Dead Roses
11. After Jane
12. When The Blue Hour Comes
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