Wednesday, July 23, 2014

CD Odyssey Disc 643: Amy Winehouse

My work and life schedule has prevented me getting this review written for three straight days, but I haven’t gotten tired of this next album. That’s a good sign.

Disc 643 is….Back to Black
Artist: Amy Winehouse

Year of Release: 2006

What’s up with the Cover? I love this picture. Amy Winehouse is sitting on a chair looking soulful and bit gawky, with her limbs and hair all over the place entreating you to listen to her music. Don’t mind if I do.

How I Came To Know It: This is one of Sheila’s records. I don’t know how she came to know Amy Winehouse, but I know her because Sheila bought the CD.

How It Stacks Up:  Not counting her posthumous 2011 release (I hate those) Amy Winehouse only ever made two studio albums. We have both of them, and it is hard to choose between them. I guess I’ll give “Back to Black” the slight edge, making it number one.

Rating:  4 stars

The most tragic part of “Back to Black” is knowing that it would be the last album Amy Winehouse would live to see released. Despite the grim truths in these songs, and the tortured characters they portray, they are so defiant and powerful it is hard to imagine anything ever laying Amy low. We knew it was great when we heard it, we just didn’t know it was also tragic.

Her previous album, “Frank” is hard hitting in places, but it is also a bit more loungy, and relaxed. On “Back to Black” Winehouse infuses more soul and R&B into her songs. She also writes them all (half solo, and half as collaborations) and for that alone I admire this record more than her debut.

The star of this album is obviously Amy’s powerhouse voice. The backing musicians are good, but they know well enough to take a backseat to Ms. Winehouse’s vocal brilliance.

Winehouse has a relaxed delivery that plays dangerously close to sloppy but never crosses the line. The result is a style that is all her own; low and almost drawling, her voice climbs over the wreckage of a series of breakup and makeup songs like a firefighter looking for survivors in a collapsed building. How she makes it strangely beautiful is hard to fathom until you hear her do it.

Calling Winehouse’s voice sexy isn’t quite accurate, because sexy implies an element of coquettishness, and there is none of that here; Winehouse is all raunch. Her low register artfully sways and staggers its path through each song with a throaty, dirty abandon. I’d say she sings with the freedom of someone alone the bathroom, except it is abundantly clear that Amy wants you to watch.

The tortured nature of the songs don’t shy away from her problems, but instead lay them bare for us all to see. The record would almost feel like a concept record about a collapsing life, until you realize she’s just singing what she knows.

Love is a key theme, but on “Back to Black” it is just as likely to be a weapon, wielded against your lover or even yourself. “Love Is A Losing Game” imagines love through a series of gambling metaphors - a bad hand, futile odds and ultimately a joke of the gods. It is tough stuff to hear, but so damned compelling you can’t turn it off

My favourite song lyrically is “You Know I’m No Good” which is ostensibly about a woman who just can’t help cheating on her man, but at a deeper level is just the final throes of a relationship in collapse – consider the last ditch effort to make things right in the final stanza:

“Sweet reunion, Jamaica and Spain
We’re like how we were again,
I’m in the tub, you on the seat,
Lick your lips as I soap my feet.
Then you notice likkle carpet burn,
My stomach drop and my guts churn,
You shrug and it’s the worst
Who truly stuck the knife in first.”

Bad enough the casual disinterest that is expressed by one partner going to the can while his partner naked in the tub (I told you she wasn’t alone in the bathroom), but then the latest evidence of cheating is discovered and the reaction is nothing more than a shrug.

The album’s most famous track – and the anthem that Winehouse would become known for – is “Rehab” a defiant song rejecting any intervention into her bad lifestyle. We all had a good laugh at that one back in 2006, but it isn’t so funny now.

Rehab” is still a great song, but now it always reminds me of a Lucinda Williams 2008 song “Little Rock Star.” Williams has posthumously dedicated “Little Rock Star” to Winehouse in concerts and despite this video dedication to Kurt Cobain, it is hard to imagine it is about anyone other than Amy Winehouse when I hear it. Give it a listen, but ignore the pictures – just close your eyes and think of Amy.

“Back to Black” is an exceptional record; a moment in time captured forever at its most tragic and beautiful, from an exceptional artist who was taken away from us too soon. It is reminder of what a God damned shame it is to have lost her.


Best tracks:   Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Back to Black, Love is a Losing Game, Tears Dry on Their Own, Some Unholy War  

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