Two famed vocalists attempt to give the New American Songbook an upgrade. Only one of them turns out to be successful, however.
From Blurt (www.blurt-online.com)
There really is no way to sort out whatever the New American (or, maybe, Post-Rock Singer-Songwriter) Songbook is unless musicians who are not performing/recording songwriters cover the compositions of those who are. Especially needed are covers by those with trained voices, who can reveal to us how memorable a song’s melodies and lyrical concerns are when stripped of the vocal idiosyncrasies (or just plain limitations) of the composition’s originators.
This is an old-fashioned concept, but we depend on such singers to bestow legitimacy on pop tunes. With good reason. The financial rewards of songwriting are so great, and the difficulty of filling up an album so burdensome, that even the best songwriters compose and release a lot of junk. And then marketing and hype take over, and who knows what will last and what will be forgotten in year or two?
Presumably, Renee Fleming should know. An esteemed operatic soprano, she’s already well-versed in the classical music that has lasted for ages. (And she showed good taste in a foray into jazz and pop-leaning rock with 2005′s Haunted Heart.) So, when word got out she was going to try to add mature-adult meaning to contemporary indie-rock (and a few older selections) on Dark Hope (Decca; www.deccarecords-us.com), there was reason for optimism. After all, to take a very different kind of voice as an example, isn’t that what Johnny Cash did so successfully with his American Recordings? He singled-handedly made Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” a New American Songbook classic.
But does Fleming actually understand these songs? More important, does she like them – enough to offer producer David Kahne some input into the right kind of arrangements for her? Kahne is a respected rock producer, from Romeo Void to Regina Spektor, but producers need to understand their artists. Listening to the cheesy, elevator-music string-and-synth arrangement on Fleming’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (a song not in need of any more interpretations, at any rate), or the dated Laura Branigan-style dance-pop of Muse’s “Endlessly,” and you wonder what kind of instructions he had. Did Fleming just say, “Eh, whatever…”?
One asks this because it’s unclear how interested she is in this project. As has been widely reported, Metallica’s management company came to her with the idea. (That’s almost as strange as Gene Simmons managing Liza Minnelli in the 1980s.) Rather than find songs fully suitable for her voice, Fleming lowered her range to handle the chosen material. But she sounds outside it, turning Band of Horses’ “No One’s Going to Love You” into something trivial and coming off disinterested and in a hurry to finish on Death Cab For Cutie’s “Soul Meets Body.”
This album is more boring than kitschy – it’s no Pat Boone In a Metal Mood. Actually, one of its kitschiest songs – The Mars Volta’s “With Twilight As My Guide” – is one of the best, as she cuts loose to hit some high notes and Kahne finds a Goth-meets-Rocky-Horror-Picture-Show arrangement to match. She also infuses Duffy’s “Stepping Stone” with some excitement when she starts letting notes ascend like Jeff Buckley could do.
Fleming is 51, so one guesses she’s familiar with Jefferson Airplane’s “Today,” Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” and Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” – all of which she covers – when they were FM-rock radio stalwarts in her formative years. (“Hallelujah,” while from the 1980s, never really caught on until spotlighted in Shrek and by Jeff Buckley.) She seems comfortable with them, but the unsympathetic arrangements weigh her down.
Whether or not anything here ever enters the New American Songbook as a classic (“Hallelujah” already has), it’s doubtful Dark Hope will have much to do with it.
But Barb Jungr’s interpretations of songs by male songwriters on her new album The Men I Love: The New American Songbook (Naim Label; www.naimlabel.com, is going to matter – a lot. This 56-year-old British song stylist brings the same kind of warm, elegant clarity and effortlessly compelling dramatic intonation to her singing as Emma Thompson does to her acting, and instantly establishes anything she does as important.
Her background is varied – she is a songwriter and has recorded tributes to other song stylists, like Nina Simone, Edith Piaf and Elvis. But as a steadfast believer in alternative-cabaret, she has been especially devoted to interpreting contemporary singer-songwriters in a nightclub setting, with its emphasis on subdued and elegant, piano- and string-based arrangements.
On The Men I Love, she uses that approach to show how much additional meaning (and musicality) can be gotten out of songs by the likes of Talking Heads, Neil Diamond, Dylan, Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Todd Rundgren, Bread and others when removed from their familiar voices and arrangements.
That’s not to dismiss the originals – “Once in a Lifetime” had a wonderful electro-tinged rock arrangement that has itself stood the test of time. But listen to Jungr slow it down, almost to a hushed intimacy, caressing syllables rather than jerking them the way David Byrne does, lowering her voice to state, “My God, what have I done,” like a confession. You will be moved by the song as if it’s brand new.
The Men I Love isn’t searching for hipster cred in its song selection as Fleming’s album can be accused of. Not with Bread’s “Everything I Own” or Diamond’s ancient “Red Red Wine” (joined with Andy Williams’ “Can’t Get Used to Losing You”). Rather, Jungr chooses songs because she believes they deserve a long musical life. Her version of the David Gates-composed Bread song is straightforward, a good chance for her to demonstrate the softness in her voice in its higher range, and showcases the song’s stately simplicity.
She is also neither rock sentimentalist nor ironist. The appeal to her of “The River” and Simon & Garfunkel’s anti-nostalgia “My Little Town” is in the poignant melancholy of their stark portraits of America’s dying industrial age. And she nails it.
“The River” always had one of Springsteen’s best bridges (“but I remember us riding in my brother’s car…”) and Jungr handles it with tremendous empathy and insight, without choking up or losing control or doing anything that could be interpreted as playing for listener sympathy.
“My Little Town” is a particular revelation, with its opening piano chords sounding like tolling bells, because the song is so underrated. When Simon & Garfunkel released it in 1975, part of a short-lived reunion, it seemed like Paul Simon was trying to ruin the excitement of the “comeback” by writing a downer song about a lifestyle he didn’t know or like. But Jungr makes it so real, and the piano’s jazzy twists emphasize how sturdy a melody the song has.
These two songs, Jungr’s interpretations establish, belong in the New American Songbook not because they carry on the traditional song craft values of Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, but because they told the truth. They got it right. And Jungr, as one of our very best contemporary song stylists, indeed gets the truth out of them…as she does with everything she sings.
[Photo of Renee Fleming (L) by Andrew Eccles; Barb Jungr (R) by Steve Ullathorne]
Taken from this post:
Cover Versions: Renee Fleming vs. Barb Jungr
