I don't know that I would have ever listened to Tracy Chapman's debut record if it wasn't one of three hundred records in a box, but I decree that it is a pretty good album. Chapman is a fiery singer-songwriter whose lyrics deal with a lot of racial and political themes. Although I do consider myself a liberal, my resume as an activist is rather lacking, and I am rarely inherently interested in political music, finding often that it is heavy-handed and obvious. From a pure lyrical perspective, I don't find Chapman an exception to this. But what I really care about when I put on a record is the music itself, and her raw, husky, almost masculine voice has an undeniable power that lends a lot of gravity to words that sound much more trite on an album sleeve.
The best songs here pull off a cross between James Taylor folk and Bruce Springsteen, as when Chapman reaches the choruses on songs like "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" and "Fast Car," she invokes the populist, anthemic appeal of The Boss. The downside of the record is that the instrumentation is generally too bland and quiet for an album intended to inspire and motivate, meaning that on songs where the vocal hooks lack punch, there is not a lot to fall back on. Because of this, and the fact that the rest of Chapman's oeuvre was not as well-received critically, this record is not enough to make me interested in the rest of her albums. But I will definitely keep this one, and undoubtedly put it on again sometime in the not so distant future.
No comments:
Post a Comment