CD Odyssey Disc 436: Tracy Chapman

This next album snuck up on me a little.  I should’ve known not to ever doubt this next artist.

Disc 436 is… New Beginning 

Artist: Tracy Chapman

Year of Release: 1995

What’s up with the Cover?  This album has a sleeve insert that allows for one of two covers, so I’m including them both.  I think the default one is the close up of a flower.  It is just a bit too mid-nineties folk for my tastes, but I guess that makes sense.  I prefer the other option, which is Tracy looking happy and relaxed, like we’ve interrupted her in her backyard garden.  I use that one in my CD collection, and so here it is for you to enjoy as well:

How I Came To Know It: I’ve known Tracy Chapman since her first album (more on that at my review for her debut self-titled record, linked below). This particular record was a Christmas or birthday gift from my lovely wife Sheila.

How It Stacks Up:  Tracy Chapman has eight albums, but I only have the first four.  Of those four, I’ll put this one last.  I still liked it, but the other three are just that much better.  Since this completes this artist (and since I have three or more albums by her) tradition dictates a quick recap, in order of preference:

1. Self Titled: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 48).
2. Crossroads:  4 stars (reviewed at Disc 234).
3. Matters of the Heart:  4 stars (reviewed at Disc 289).
4. New Beginning:  3 stars (reviewed right here).

Rating:  3 stars

Tracy Chapman makes me feel inspired for a better world, even when she sings about a worse one.  “New Beginning” is not at all new in this regard, and I was glad for it as it shone a little sunshine into my disposition on my way to and from work the last couple of days.

Chapman’s voice is so bluesy and full, and yet incredibly fragile at the same time.  When she sings about her own heartache you want to reach down the speaker wire and give her a big hug, and when she sings about someone else’s you feel like you need the same hug right back just hearing about it. 

“Smoke and Ashes” is the former, where Tracy teams her world-class voice with a brilliantly played piano.  Bemoaning the loss of a callous man she’s right up there with Lucinda Williams, capturing the raw and rough truth of a love that only ever flowed one way.  With Lucinda you expect her to show up drunk at the lover’s house later and throw empties through the window.  With Tracy, you just get the impression that she will shoulder her backpack and head off down the road alone, her eyes downcast but shoulders up.  Oh – and she’ll write a song about what a complete dick you are as well.  “Smoke and Ashes” is a fine burn on that front, pun intended.

Chapman also continues her well-established tradition of a singer with a social conscience, tackling environmentalism, religion and systemic poverty with equal gusto.

I found that while every song on this front is heartfelt, some of the individual lines land with a bit of a thud.  Her environmental anthem “The Rape of the World” is musically beautiful, but in places seems to overstate its theme, and lose a little bit of resonance in the process.  Her humanist anthem, “Heaven’s Here on Earth” appealed strongly to my own sensibilities, but again while musically and vocally powerful, did not deliver at the same level lyrically.  Full marks for demanding the human race pay some attention to the here and now though.

She hits strongest with “Cold Feet,” which has “In the Ghetto” themes of a young man growing up with little hope, trying to do the right thing, but at every turn pressured by his empty pockets to do the wrong one.  ‘Cold feet’ recurs throughout, from inadequate shoes, to the willful pride not to let your peers down (not getting ‘cold feet’ for a robbery), through to the eventual cold feet of the grave when that robbery goes wrong.  It could have come off like a bad high school poetry assignment, but in Chapman’s expert hands it works beautifully.

Musically, the album is aptly titled, as Chapman mixes traditional blues and tribal rhythms in with her usual lyrical folk music.  The song “New Beginning” even features a didgeridoo successfully, which isn’t easy.  This bigger, more upbeat sound is most famously delivered on the record’s single release, “Give Me One Reason.”  This is a classic song about a woman who’s had enough of being ignored.  She doesn’t want to leave, but she’ll be damned if she’ll stay and be wallpaper.  A repeat of the warning to those who wrong Ms. Chapman – she’ll ensure posterity does not remember you kindly.

Before she closes out the album, she also gives us a pretty little song featuring just voice, background vocals and guitar telling the tale of a broken love, advising her audience that while they may have had their heart stolen, even the Tin Man “found he had what he thought he lacked.”  Here is the shoulders-up Chapman, inspiring you to buck up even as the song itself stays respectfully small and morose.  I also like that while the song is called “Remember the Tinman” the reference to the character comes only as a late payoff.  Some of the songs on “New Beginning” beat themes to death a little, and I prefer Chapman to let the idea creep up on you more naturally, as she does here.

Overall, this album isn’t at the same level of excellence of her first three albums, but it is very close.  It is a good record that I am resolved to play more often as a result of giving it a little time on the CD Odyssey.

Damn, this whole journey of musical discover was a good idea. 

Best tracks:  Smoke and Ashes, Cold Feet, At This Point In My Life, Give Me One Reason, Remember the Tinman