[vivfox]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

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.

Wow. That was so beautifully written. This should be in a magazine. Thank you!