Welcome back to the CD Odyssey! Before I get into the next record, a quick word of remembrance for Shane MacGowan, frontman of the Pogues and the Popes who died this week. Shane MacGowan was one of the true all time greats. If he was too hard on himself (and he was), it always felt like it was in the service to the music. My collection is full of Pogues and Popes albums that still get played often.
Thanks for the music, Shane. I’m sad to say you must be on your way, but all the best in the great hereafter.
Disc 1696 is…That Kind of Girl
Artist: Amy Speace
Year of Release: 2015
What’s up with the Cover? Giant Head Cover – profile version!
How I Came To Know It: I discovered Amy Speace through her 2021 album “There Used to be Horses Here” and dug back through her catalogue from there. Ironically, I still have not been able to find a copy of “There Used to be Horses Here” but I ordered “That Kind of Girl through Amazon (barf) when I couldn’t find it elsewhere.
How It Stacks Up: I have three Amy Speace albums. Of the three, “That Kind of Girl” is good, but still only finishes third.
Rating: 3 stars but almost 4
Amy Speace is one of those great voices you’ve probably never heard of. On “That Kind of Girl” she shows a self-assurance and writing talent that makes listening to her sing an even greater pleasure.
Speace traverses multiple styles on “That Kind of Girl”, with songs that are country, folk, pop and even a bit of bluegrass. The tunes, both in terms of how she structures a tune and also the range and timbre of her voice, remind me strongly of Mary Chapin Carpenter.
There’s a classical composition feel to how Speace pulls a song together, and in her low range her similarity to Carpenter is eerie, especially on pining mid-tempo slow marches like “Come Pick Me Up.” A song offering love, and a desire to know your partner when you see them through the lens of them showing you their hometown.
She also reminded me (favourably) of Carpenter on “Better Than This” which felt a lot like “Passionate Kisses” right down to the demand for, well…passionate kisses, and through that metaphor, more commitment in the relationship.
Speace can tend toward Songwriter 101 approaches in her imagery, doubling down on “street as conversation” (“Come Pick Me Up”) or “raincoat as relationship” (“Raincoat”). On the former it works, framing everything up and delivered through her sneaky powerful vocals. On the latter, less so, where the metaphor feels strained; a darling that she should’ve killed.
The album explores spirituals as well, with the bluesy “Three Days” and the bluegrass-inspired “Hymn for the Crossing.” Of the two, I prefer “Hymn…” but I think part of that is just stylistic preference.
The best song on the record is the title track, a heart-wrenching tune of lost love, where the pain goes so deep the narrator has to confront a crisis of confidence in herself. The harshest lines…
“Girl,
who'd let love take her down
Girl
who'd wade into a lake with stones tied to her gown”
…are bleak, but Speace pairs the doubt of the lyrics with a tune that is resolute and reassuring. Yes, she’s discovered some weakness, but these hardships are a lesson learned, not a punishment. You can tell that despite the blackness today, she’ll be stronger tomorrow. I’m a sucker for songs that play the lyrics and melody against each other to create tension in the theme, and “That Kind of Girl” gracefully delivers.
The arrangement decisions are as varied as the musical approaches. Piano features heavily, but Speace works in guitar and violin to greater or lesser degree as the song demands. This album had me marvelling at the centuries-long friendship of the piano and the violin. Violin lifting your soul through an emotional journey, the piano grounding everything else to free the violin up to work its magic. I’ve heard it a million times, but maybe it was the even mix on the record that had me noticing more than usual.
On “In Chicago” violin is set aside for fiddle (you know what I mean…) and Speace doubles down on a southern mountain music vibe that had me thinking favourably of bands like the Stray Birds. This is a song for stomping wooden floorboards and shouting out “woop!” whenever the spirit moves you.
For a host of scheduling reasons, this album lingered in my car longer than usual, and afforded me a lot of extra listens (maybe four all the way through). On each iteration, I liked the record a little more, and picking the “best tracks” section below was harder than usual, because they changed as I went. That’s the sign of a good record, though, making “That Kind of Girl” my kind of album.
Best tracks: Come Pick Me Up, That Kind of Girl, Hymn for the Crossing, In Chicago
No comments:
Post a Comment