CD Odyssey Disc 613: Joan Osborne

What a crazy day today. A lot of paid work, then some volunteer work, and I am tired. That said, I am ready to roll another album and that doesn’t happen until I write a review, so here we go.

Disc 613 is…. Relish

Artist: Joan Osborne

Year of Release: 1995

What’s up with the Cover? A slouching Joan Osborne looks out shyly at the camera, like a misfit kid in the back of a high school yearbook photo. There is also a little girl with wings and a guitar (barf) and a bird (better). This cover looks like it was built in Windows Paint. The only thing I like about it is part of the background is Miami Dolphins aqua.

How I Came To Know It:  Like everyone else – I heard the hit single “One of Us” on a music video channel and decided it was pretty good.

How It Stacks Up:  Shockingly Joan Osborne released seven more records after “Relish,” the most recent of which (“Love and Hate”) came out earlier this month. “Relish” is the only one we have though, so I can’t really compare it to the others.

Rating:  3 stars

There’s always the danger when you buy an album for a single song that it is going to be the only good track there is. Fortunately, “Relish” as a record is much more than one song.

Of course that one song, “One of Us” was a pretty big hit. It was number one in Canada, and top ten around much of the Western world and with good reason, too.  Despite a clip of a very strange old lady chanting at the front of it (o nineties production, how I don’t miss you) it quickly switches over to a catchy melody. Osborne has a powerful voice, but on “One of Us” she reins it in as befits the song’s whimsical and bitter-sweet musings about if God were one of us.

The song explores the metaphysical quandary of whether we would really be happy if we could prove the existence of God. Would the realization weigh heavily on our souls, or worse still would it remove the mystery around the whole question? The song has a gentle humour in it which mostly works. That Osborne can sing a ridiculous line like this:

“Nobody calling on the phone

Except for the Pope maybe in Rome.”

And make it work, I count as a minor miracle of some kind, but she pulls it off. Elsewhere in the song God attempts to take a bus home, but I’m pretty sure none of the routes go there, at least in my city. I think he might be better off with a cab, and it’ll be a hefty fare as well. But I digress…

Back to the rest of this record, which is pretty strong. Later in her career Osborne would do whole albums of cover songs, but on “Relish” she only does a couple. The most notable of these is a remake of Bob Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat” and while different, I think it is the equal of the original, which is saying something.

The album has a lot of pop sensibilities, but Osborne’s roots are rock and blues, and they show through in her throaty, powerhouse delivery. She draws the notes out at times, but in a good way that avoids annoying vocal runs like you might hear on American Idol or the Voice (note to contestants of those shows – stop that).

 “Right Hand Man” is very bluesy and owes a lot to Ray Charles in flavour. The album even has a song later on (“Spider Web”) which is directly about Ray Charles. I don’t love that song, but it is a helpful signpost about one influence on Osborne’s work. She draws from that well a little bit too often, and songs like “Dracula Moon” and “Pensacola” try a bit too hard to capture the blues without fully managing it.

I prefer her songs where she’s working her own funky pop style into the rock n’ blues, as she does on tracks like she does on both the upbeat “Ladder” and the sadder and slower “Crazy Baby” which both show off her vocal chops.

“Let’s Just Get Naked” is a darkly fun track, about a relationship that isn’t always healthy but where there is at least one thing the two lovers do well together. This song is sexy and playful and it didn’t surprise me to see the album’s producer, Rich Chertoff, also produced Sophie B. Hawkins’ album “Tongues and Tails” featuring the song “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover.”

Overall Osborne has her own blended sound and demonstrates a lot of range artistically. I like the different approaches she takes to a single genre, but I suspect made it hard to market her. She also never sexed herself up like modern video-era divas, and at 33 years old she probably represented limited potential to the soulless record execs waiting for her to pump out a bunch of schmaltzy pop ballads that would make them all rich off of her talent.

She didn’t want to do that anyway, and you can tell listening to the record she is willing and more than able to set her own course. This record didn’t blow me away, but I think “Relish” has an original sound and deserved more than to be saddled with a single hit. Of course a single hit is more than I ever had, so good for you, Joan, and congratulations on carving a musical career doing exactly your own thing along the way.

Best tracks:   Man in the Long Black Coat, Right Hand Man, One of Us, Ladder, Let’s Just Get Naked, Crazy Baby