Music reviews”Bare,” Annie Lennox The third solo release from the former Eurythmics front-woman should satisfy her longtime fans. But “Bare” really isn’t potent enough to draw in new listeners.
It’s beautifully produced – almost too beautifully. While the full orchestra gives many tracks an atmospheric, lush sound, it sounds a bit too clean, too controlled. Lennox has a powerful voice and it would be thrilling to hear her truly let it loose. “A Thousand Beautiful Things,” “Wonderful” and “Pavement Cracks,” the release’s first single, are worth a listen. But, overall, “Bare” isn’t much more than dinner party background music.
“Alive In Seattle,” Heart
This Heart has still got the beat. Twenty-eight years after sister act Ann and Nancy Wilson exploded out of the Canadian northwest with a blend of tender harmonies and bone-crunching rock riffs, Heart proves they still have a lot to contribute to contemporary music.
This two-disc set recorded last summer at the Paramount Theater in Seattle offers steaming new live versions of most of their greatest hits, including “Magic Man,” “Barracuda,” and “Crazy On You.” It also includes killer covers of two Led Zeppelin classics – “The Battle Of Evermore” and “Black Dog,” that the band has done live for years but never recorded and Elton John’s “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.”
No female singer in the history of rock (and darn few males, either) has had a stronger, clearer or more soaring voice than Ann Wilson, and “Alive In Seattle” captures it perfectly.
Nancy’s more delicate vocals and artistry on acoustic and electric guitar blend with that voice to give this band a distinctive sound many have tried to match, with little success.
But the best part of this album is new songs like “Sister Wild Rose” and “Break The Rock,” which owes more than a little to AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell.”
“Ultimate Dolly Parton,” Dolly Parton
Every few years a new Dolly Parton compilation is cranked out, and most of them are lacking in some way.
Such is the case for the misnamed “Ultimate Dolly Parton.”
The 20-song album has just three songs that weren’t on either “The Essential Dolly Parton” (1995) or “The Essential Dolly Parton Volume 2” (1997).
The first one, “Please Don’t Stop Loving Me,” is best enjoyed along with her other great duets with Porter Wagoner on their 1996 retrospective, “The Essential Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton.”
The other two “new” additions are “To Know Him is to Love Him” by the trio supergroup with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, and Dolly’s 1989 feel-good rocker “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That.”
However, if you want the old goodies and still can’t get enough of Parton’s crossover hits from the late 1970s and early ’80s (“Here You Come Again,” “9 to 5” and the inevitable “Islands in the Stream”), this album will fill the hole in your CD collection. But just barely.
_ Landon Hall, AP Writer
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“Church: Songs of Soul and Inspiration” (Universal, $18.98) – Various Artists
On “Church: Songs of Soul and Inspiration” some of the top divas of our time, including Dionne Warwick, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, turn their affections heavenward and give some classic soul tunes a gospel revival.
The lyrics are familiar, but the meanings are fresh. Stephanie Mills’ sings the essence of “love thy neighbor as thyself” into her thoughtful version of “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand” and Ann Nesby’s voice is anointed with a longing that is simply angelic on Leon Russell’s “Song for You.”
Shirley Caesar offers a frame of reference for classic gospel style with the standard hymn “His Eye is on the Sparrow” and Denyce Graves’ dynamic range is showcased on an updated version of the classic “Ave Maria.”
If you want to know where these singer’s inspiration comes from, pop the second CD of this two-disc set into your computer. In videotaped interviews, each artist recounts how gospel music affected their lives, and how the sacred essence of “Church,” as Maya Angelou defines it in her intro, permeates their beings.