Trouble In Shangri-La
 

In anticipation of the new album, I've gone back and started listening to my whole Stevie collection, which started with TOSOTM when someone on this board wrote an excellent analysis of the album, which I'm hoping my post will spur another for this one.

I've found other than the playlist I've had on my iPhone with several of my favorite Stevie songs to begin with, lot of her songs on her albums really suffer from dated 80s production and synthesizers which drown out a lot of very nice songs. This changes with Street Angel, but the album is so flat and muted for the most part, it's a little boring.

At the time TISL came out, I didn't like it at all. I thought it was an odd mash up of current pop production (of which I was a big alt-rock fan at the time so I didn't like) and Sheryl Crow sounding tracks. I was really disappointed when it came out, and shelved the record. This is the only Stevie album I haven't really listened to in its entirety until this week. I also found that her older voice was a little hard to listen to.

10 years later, what I said on the production seems to still be the case, but I don't find it a bad thing. The majority of the songs on this album are stellar and up there with the best of Bella Donna I've found. The fire isn't there in her voice, but she's aged and mature and I don't mind that (I've gotten used to it by this point with SYW and a couple live albums over the last 10 years).

What I don't understand, is why in the middle of the album she has all these songs written by others! The Stevie written songs are by far the strongest on the album, was it a lack of confidence on her part?

I don't think it was lack of self~confidence in her song writing on Stevie's part. I think it was just a commerciality thing. "Too Far From Texas" got a lot of airplay on country stations here in Dallas, a big part of the reason going to Natalie Maines being on the song.

"Every Day" was there to be "the single" and "It's Only Love"? Well, I am guessing that Sheryl played it for Stevie, and Stevie just loved it and wanted to sing it. And she does a beautiful job!!!

Or, maybe it was like the thing with Tom: Sheryl gave Stevie "It's Only Love" and "Stevie gave her "You're Not The One". I don't know.

Stevie's song writing is stellar on Trouble In Shangr~la, IMO. "Love Changes", "Trouble In Shangri~la", "Thrown Down" and "Fall From Grace" are in my TOP Stevie Favourites of ALL~TIME! :)

This album was a "good try" to me. I got into the first 4 tracks but then it just fell apart. What I really took from this album is the Title Track. That song is epic and stellar and has a killer chorus. It's also rock. Over the last 10 years, that song has stayed with me. I guess I also took the cover from the album. The album cover for that album is one of the best in the history of rock and roll.

TISL is going to be hard to top. Without getting into it too deeply, IMO it was her best record since her trilogy of Bella Donna, Wild Heart & Rock A Little. But I have a feeling In Your Dreams will be better on every level than TISL & more cohesive. Stevie is bringing it all back full circle & in your face with the Stevie-ness feel of this record. She is finally fully embracing her gothic and fantasy side with this record and documentary/film. A side she subtly ran from after all the "she's a witch" gossip - that freaked her out so much that she started wearing more white around the Bella Donna era. Stevie still touched on that mystical mood & themes in a song here and there, and while The Wild Heart was indulgent and gothic-lite, to me the mood was more fairytale romance. IYD is all out there in its gothic & supernatural references: vampires, ghosts & Poe. The cover conveys it all. And I'm loving every bit of it so far! :)

Where is everyone hearing this IYD stuff is my question.

^^^
My post is what I am anticipating with In Your Dreams. I based my thoughts on hearing the production on Secret Love and Stevie's superior sounding vocals on it, as well as the mood that the album cover and outtakes are conveying so far. I think it will be cohesive sounding because Stevie collaborated so closely with Dave Stewart and did not have 3 or 4 producers involved besides Glen Ballard who already works closely with Dave anyway. Other than the 2 Ledgies that were at the IYD album preview in Feb at Sunset Sessions radio industry gig, no one else has credibly come forward saying they have heard the album.:cool:

Mixed bag and FAR to long. I really Like The title track, Candlebright, Sorcerer, Everyday, It's Only Love, and Love is. The Rest is just ok to bad:sorry:. Once again, I've said it before many times. Stevie needs shorter albums. Can't stress it enough. Short of an hour does not work. Never has.....never will.

Mick

No, Stevie does not need shorter albums. :)

You can make your own edited CD of the few tracks you enjoy. Or hit the "skip" button.

For me, the more Stevie, the better. ;)

TISL is almost flawless, IMO. The only really bad song is That Made Me Stronger. Too Far from Texas makes me cringe b/c of Stevie's vocal, but it's a good song.

The album was easily the best thing she did since RAL (which is another favorite of mine). It'll be hard to top, for sure.

I totally agree with that statement. That song was solid and she didn't put any effort into singing it. Her vocal ruined that for me. I also think that her vocal ruined My Heart. When I heard that song, I could barely listen to it because of her vocal. However, it's very well written and it was another missed opportunity. I love the song but hate the vocal. Sigh. I hope that doesn't happen on this album.

I felt the opposite. I was very excited, I enjoyed the record, and I thought her voice sounded better than it had in ages. :shrug:

Different strokes. If IYD is over 45 mins....which it most likely will be...I will scream. I can't handle a long Stevie record. I could skip...point taken. But still it's just discouraging to me....terribly long records. Weird quirk I guess.

Mick

Yeah 40 min is a good album length... I reckon she'll only have 10 or 11 songs on it anyway.

I'm in minority again, this time for thinking that her vocal on TFFT is far superior to the one on POTU - or most of the rest of the album.

- Jake

That's because those albums had a lot of bad songs on them. What if this is an album with all good songs on it. And what if she actually carries the album with her vocals. The only time she did that was with Bella Donna.

If she makes a flawless album then you'll hear no complaints from me. So we hope for the best:thumbsup: but her track record IMO is that long albums spell death. just one man's lowly view.:cool: And I agree with you about Bella Donna

Mick

I could never really get into TISL aside from Sorcerer and POTU... but even then, If I had the choice I'd rather listen to earlier versions of those songs.

Have to agree with you on both counts, Jondalar. I LOVE "Trouble In Shangri-La" and I too thought the album cover was amazing.

I'm the opposite of most people in this thread... when TISL came out, I thought it was flawless. Best thing she'd ever done. As the years have progressed though, my love has slowly unravelled.

If I break out TISL these days, it's simply to play Bombay Sapphires. I can't even quantify it, but that's just one of my all time fav songs. I think it's just got a gorgeous atmosphere, and is very indicative of the subject matter. Plus, I'm a water loving person... I 'get' her love of water, and how it cleanses and rights her.

Other than that, like others have said, the first 4 songs are so good... then the album just falls apart. Don't get me wrong, there are other strong songs... but they don't seem to sit as well together as the first few tracks do. I'm not a terribly big fan of Stevie's voice on the album, either. When the album came out, I thought she sounded better than she had in decades. I listen to it now, and think she sounds like a croaky old smoker. And I find her vocals to be very monotone and lazy as well. I don't know if it's extremely liberal auto tuning or genuinely better singing... but Stevie's vocals on Secret Love alone blow every song on TISL out of the water. A decade on, I find the production/mixing to be a bit syrupy as well. It sounded so modern and fresh in May of 2001, though.

Who knows, perhaps I'll come around in regards to TISL in time. I used to *HATE* Rock A Little... and now it's my favorite Stevie solo album :p. So maybe TISL will sound just as classic to me one day, and will make me smile and remember when popular music really did sound that way! :)

Like most Stevie fanatics, through the years I have LOVED songs/albums, then hated them...then come back to them years later and loved them again, etc. For me, this especially rings true on TOSOTM and RAL. Also, depending on what mood I'm in, or how my life is going at the moment, that will usually determine which Stevie songs or album I will pull out.

As far as TISL, I initially LOVED the first 4 songs, then the last few songs. The middle section of the album never grabbed me. That being said, I still think of it as a solid album and I will always have an appreciation for it...as well as that period of my life. My favorite albums have usually (and they do change somewhat) been in this order...

1. Wild Heart
2. Bella Donna
3. Rock A Little
4. TISL
5. Street Angel
6. TOSOTM

I'm really optimistic that IYD will rank somewhere in the top 3 for me.

^^^^Bombay Sapphires is very underrated and IMHO one of her best of the last 25 years and is the only song on record that she produced herself.As for the entire album there are too many producers and this kept it from having a cohesive sound .I loved it upon release and still think it is very good with more postives than negatives.I'm going to go out on a limb though and say that I believe that IYD is going to be the better album both vocally and cohesively.I think that Stevie has committed herself to IYD in a way that she has not done to an album in many years.I also think that she is possibly at her most artistically unfettered ever.She is making the album that she wants to make commercial considerations be damned and that was not really the case with TISl.

About two years ago, when I first listened to TISL, I'd just downloaded all of Stevie's albums (I have since bought them all though, don't worry :laugh:) and listened to them all from Bella Donna to TISL.

I loved Bella Donna and The Wild Heart, Rock A Little was very hit-and-miss for me, and then I loathed a lot of TOSOTM and Street Angel, so I was quite dreading listening to TISL.

The title track alone blew away all that, it's an incredible song, and I think the album as a whole is pretty incredible. TISL-Candlebright-Sorcerer-Planets-Every Day is, in my opinion, the strongest 5 track run on a Stevie record since TWH.

The middle part of the album. TFFT-TMMS drags to hell and back, and whilst It's Only Love is a gorgeous song, it serves to further drag the middle out, so not her best sequencing.

Love Changes is a really different song to anything Stevie's done, and I really love it. It sounds so fresh, even now. I Miss You Now wasn't a favourite when I first heard it, but I'm starting to appreciate it more now.

Bombay Sapphires - Fall From Grace - Love Is, is in my opinion, a really strong closing run of tracks, much like the last three tracks from RAL.

tl;dr. I love the TISL album. It drags a bit in the middle, but the two bookends of the album are amazing. At first, I wasn't a fan of her more mature voice, as at the time, I didn't like any of her vocals post Wild Heart, but, now, I love them.

I think TISL showed that Stevie still had a great album in her, and after the overly produced mess that was TOSOTM, and the blandness of SA, I think TISL was a brilliant return to form.

Well that pretty much sums up my feelings as well. :D

I agree. "Shorter albums" seems to be recurring theme on this board whether its' FM or solo, and I just don't understand that at all.

I understand wanting only "quality" tracks on an album and no "filler", but what constitutes quality is subjective and is in the eyes of the beholder. I hate to think that songs I might love could be sacrificed (while others remain) in the interest of some arbitrary time restriction.

For example, it seems from reading his posts that Mike B. and I always like the opposite songs on any given album; if he likes it, I don't, and vice-versa. But I would hate for either of us not to have experienced some of our favorite songs because an album can only be forty-two minutes long.

I agree. I'd say nowdays the key is to output as much as possible, and then some people will like a little of this or a little of that. For me, my favorite songs end up on my iphone and I ignore the others with new albums that come out, so it's moot. I don't even have to click to skip. I think the majority of people listen to music this way.

Yep, it's the Year 2011, we all know how to make our own CDs and use the "skip" button. It took me about 8 years to get into "I Miss You", and I LOVE it now! I'm SO glad that it's not a lost track, bootlegged somehow.

HOW MANY Stevie Fans just buy the CD at Target, go home, listen to the CD, and then just whine or bitch when a song they're not crazy about comes on? NONE. We ALL just hit "Skip" and then proceed to put our favourite tracks on our phones or iMixes or whathaveyou. And the songs we don't like as much are ALWAYS THERE, waiting to see if we might come around again and give them another try to win our hearts. Maybe they never do, but at least they're not in some F~ING Vault, hidden away from the ones who DO love them.

"I Miss You" did it for me, after I ignored it for so long. Same with "How Still My Love", "I Don't Want To Know", "Street Angel", "Illume" and others that did not grab me immediately, all which I feel so blessed to have.

Delete your own Stevie CDs. LEAVE MINE ALONE. MORE STEVIE, PLEASE!!!

Yes, back in the days of vinyl I can understand the critique that the album should be shorter more than I can now. Back then, I was too lazy to get up and manually skip over a plodding track, but then I got a turntable with a laser eye that could automatically skip tracks and I thought that was heaven.

Now, with digital music, you can listen to as much of an album, in any sequence that you like, without effort. Of course, I don't do that much. I admit that sometimes I would skip over that desert known as Silver Girl and RTTG on SYW, but 95% of the time, I listen to the CD as it was created.

Michele

"Runs in"

Just because you can put 80 mins of music on a disc does not mean you should!!!!...granted Stevie does not use 80 mins..but...you get my point:p

"runs out"

Mick

We are in total agreement. It's ludicrous that any solo Mac artist should have an album longer than Rumours (11 tracks). And as wonderful as Stevie's album may be, I believe it will suffer for being too long.

That said, as for the Mac, I think that Tusk provided the perfect post-Rumours format. I think all their albums afterward should have been double albums (with no solo careers to siphon material).

Huh? Is there a such thing as too much money? Too much cheesecake? Too much peace? No, no, no! So how in da hell can there be too much Stevie music? :shrug: The world simply has a limitless capacity for new Stevie songs. I say, bring them on: 80+ minutes!

I'm just of the school of thought that less is more......and that goes for any artist....not just Stevie. Otherwise it's like, Shut up goat woman...Shut up. I kid of course. I still stand by my opinion:wavey:

Mick

While Rock A Little isn't my favourite I do love it a lot more than I did when I first heard it! It's fantastic.

As for Trouble In Shangri-La, I really, really like it. When I first bought it it took me a while to get into but when I did I found it be a very rewarding album. Other than That Made Me Stronger which I've never liked and doubt I ever will (it just plan sucks!) I think it has some of her strongest material since Rock A Little.

My top 3 tracks (Not that I don't enjoy the rest but I have a listmaking/categorising obsession):

Fall From Grace: My favourite on the whole record. It was great to hear Stevie doing close to a rock song again and I think her vocal kicks ass! This should have been a single. With a push behind it and the right remixed it could have done well on the rock charts, like Too Far From Texas did for country.

Love Changes: A hidden gem of a tune. I've been really into it lately after at first losing it in the general shuffle of the album.

Love Is: Just gorgeous. Simple and understated and the perfect song to have Sarah McLachlan on - they work so well together on it. It sounds like Sarah and yet is still so very Stevie.

I'm in the minority but... I also really like Too Far From Texas. I'm a country fan and so this stood out for me. Stevie has done country better, especially on Bella Donna, but as her take on countrypolitan pop it works well. I would have liked it even more if it had been a proper duet with Natalie though.

After all these years, I can't help but wonder what "Bombay Sapphires" would have sounded like had Stevie grown the balls to ask Sting to sing on it instead of Macy Gray.

I can imagine what it might sound like, and I think I like what I think I hear.

well said Josh :laugh:

Her voice is so deep on that song that it sounds like she grew a pair.

:laugh:

man.....Did I just have a great laugh.

Mick