Quote:
Originally Posted by TrueFaith77
Well, again, I think that Heijira(?) defined it best by establishing that SYW should be compared to collections of songs. Even then, if I listed my TEN favorite post-tusk Stevie tracks, I don't know that they would rival SYW as a whole -- though NOTHING ever in the history of man beats Gypsy and Edge of Seventeen. . .
I took the listening challenge twice today: Bella Donna vs. Say You Will. Sorry, for me, it's not even a contest.
Make no mistake: Bella Donna is a beautiful thing. And while the vocal production is topnotch and the harmonies are delicate and the songwriting is lovely, the arrangements are... dull. I don't hear any adventure (EO17 excepted, of course). And the songs are a step down after FM, R, and T. (Now, for those who feel my preference is absurd, the country twang of BD might not be to everyone's taste.)
I might be in the minority in that I actually prefer Stevie's contributions to the mighty SYW to Lindsey's.
NOTES
My playlist of her SYW tracks begins with Not Make Believe. Wow!! The tumbling drums (Mick and John are not on Bella Donna!)! The vocals and guitars!! It's sonic bliss. Then, beginning proper, Illume 9/11 really rivals the gravity of Eo17: both songs deal with death and catastrophe by charting how they change her consciousness. What other post-9/11 song has done this better? This establishes the meaning for the rest of the album (what unites her songs with Lindsey's):
Thrown Down -- "Faith is a hard thing to hold onto / Something inside you says I don't have to"
Say You Will -- an invitiation and a social contract
Smile At You -- heartbreak; gesture (understanding)
Running Through The Garden -- how we deal with pain; how we mourn
Silver Girl -- a minor song that predates Mary Gaitskill's triumphant short story ("Mirror Ball"): "You cannot see her soul unless she lets you see her soul"!!!
EFO -- The strings!
Destiny Rules -- Tracks back to Illume to show how 9/11 has impacted her view of ... everything! ... especially Lindsey who graces the song with the loveliest guitar playing this side of Johnny Marr (i cribbed that from somewhere else... but it's so true)
Goodbye Baby -- Tears. Hard-won catharsis at last. Or deep reflection.
It's a full cycle. Adventurous. New insights. Art that addresses a great communal need. For the first time since Tusk, her work achieves (in conjunction with Lindsey's) and mystical imagery serves the purpose of a real social vision.
BD just doesn't offer that kind of spectacle (outside of Eo17).
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Considering BD's vintage, I would be hard pressed to think of an album by a contemporary rock act of its time that I would consider "adventurous." I guess you could say it was a simpler time- when guitars sounded like guitars and pianos sounded like pianos. The beauty about BD was that it didn't try to be something that it wasn't. It didn't employ the latest fad sounds and effects. And it was timeless in a way- lacking any references to "a high tech world." The focus here was the song and the arrangements. Every "ooh" and every scream of the guitar. Every instrument had its place and every note existed to complement the voice, which was often used as an instrument as well. Rather than flooding our ears with noise, the sparseness lent the songs an emotional honesty- the urgent solo guitar riff of Eo17, the haunting unadorned piano/high-hat intro to "Kind of Woman," the sexy piano/guitar/percussion intro to "How Still My Love," etc. The music conveyed urgency, anger, joy, pain, drama... all of these emotions that I think were kind of blunted on Stevie's SYW songs by production. And I love how the songs on BD had a beginning, middle and end to them. They built up to an uncertain emotional climax and then ebbed into a sober new understanding of the truth. On "Bella Donna," the woman moves on after her epiphany, i.e., coming "out of the darkness." On E017, at the end she finally reveals the symbolism of the dove's song. At the end of "The Highwayman," she reveals that her love lives on only in her dreams. Indeed, there are hints of this kind of writing in songs like RTTG and "Destiny Rules," and "Thrown Down," but for the most part, I don't feel that same kind of connection emotionally to her songs on SYW.