Listening to both disks it took a couple of songs for me to really settle down and my mind to focus on the music. Maybe it needs an overture and an entr'acte, eh?
Sex Kills - powerful. It really works and I wondered how she would pull it off. She did. Hejira - rolls along over an expansive landscape, up & down hills, through tunnels, over vast stretches of prairie - or maybe rides along like a sail boat moving up & down the swells. That guitar line isn't there (is it?) but I could swear I could hear it at times. Her nod to the other great bass player that colored her music. Larry seems to be channeling Jaco. Cherokee Louise - The rhythm of the original suggested the age she was writing about. Here she slows it down and there is more a sense of pathos than nostalgia. The Dawntreader - I loved this song long before I ever saw the Pacific Ocean (or any ocean). Once I became completely enamored with the sea it really enhanced my love of 'The Dawntreader'. Listening to this version I became acutely aware that the dynamics & cadence of this song are very much that of surf on a beach. Hearing her sing this one at this stage of her life after so many years was almost like hearing a whole new song. The arrangement really seems to illuminate every image she paints here. The peridots & periwinkle blue medallions and the gilded galleons sparkle and gleam through the blue-green of ocean water. You feel the roll of the harbor wake. You hear the songs that the rigging makes. You taste the spray and smell the salt air. This thing comes alive and breathes. And the way she sings 'and the dream of a baby' as if she can hardly bear to say it - heart-wrenching and very fine. Mark in Seattle
