Erin McKeown - Grand
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Erin McKeownEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2003-06-10
Music Label: Nettwerk Records
Soundtracks:
- Slung-Lo
- Cinematic
- The Taste of You
- Born to Hum
- Civilians
- Envelopes of Glassine
- How to Be a Lady
- A Better Wife
- Cosmopolitans
- Lucky Day
- An Innocent Fiction
- James!
- Starlit
- Vera
Free Music Notes for Grand
Free Music Review: Grand Indeed!
Hit: 5 Stars
This is one of those rare discs that grows on me the more I listen to it. It's catchy and upbeat, so it works as pure ear candy in the background when I have guests. But it also works in a more intimate setting, in headphones while walking or working out, because there's quite a bit going on in the lyrics too.
Erin McKeown has a fascinating voice. It's kind of tangy, like Dido or Rachael Yamagata, and she brings subtly different vocal characterizations to the different songs. She's not just singing, she's acting, which is appropriate, because one of Grand's themes is the golden age of film. Judy Garland is referenced in two songs, "cinematic" and "vera," and used to perform a third, "lucky day." "cosmopolitans" and "a better wife" debunk hollywood fictions of the ideal life, but the jazzy vocals and music lends a layer of spunky irony. "Cosmopolitans" warns me that "loneliness is expected if not predicted," and although I get the message, I can't help immediately singing along with the insanely catchy, sedative-seeking chorus that follows: "painless! don't you wish you were weightless! famous!"
This is the first Erin McKeown album I purchased (I bought it after hearing "a better wife," which is unlike any other song i've heard recently). I've never seen her perform. Some McKeown fans say this album is too mainstream; compared to her previous work it may be more radio-friendly. (I do find the chorus of "James" reminiscent of Jem's "24!") But in my opinion, this album is far from mainstream. It's catchy, but it's also quirky. The music is retro-influenced. The lyrics are clever. There is only one song I don't like on this album ("vera", kind of drab). And there is only one thing I don't love about this album: it's too well-crafted to be confessional. McKeown uses the term "lady" incessantly on this album. She's very aware of appearances, especially when she's mocking them; and I feel like the emotions here are filtered, so this isn't a good album for cathartic moods (unless you want to be cheered up despite yourself)! But overall I love "Grand". It's fun, it's intelligent, it's my favorite album right now, and I will definitely buy McKeown's next as soon as it comes out.
Grand Poster
Erin McKeown's third album is to be commended for its sense of adventure. There are 14 tracks on Grand and they encompass at least that number of musical styles, among them winsome indie-pop, gentle country-rock, lushly orchestrated barrel-organ stompery and pretty electronica that verges on trip-hop. When trying to frame McKeown in terms of other artists, you end up with an equally impressively diverse peer group: Tanya Donelly, Rickie Lee Jones, Bjork, Liquorice and Shivaree (with whom McKeown shares a drummer, George Javori).An album this stylistically promiscuous needs a fairly imposing central personality to hold it all together, and McKeown just about manages on this score, as well. Her voice, while somewhat cutesy and cloying, never becomes overbearingly so--it's at its best on a lovely version of the Judy Garland standard "Lucky Day"--and she's an engaging narrator of her tales. There aren't enough songwriters to whom it would occur to write a song in the form of a letter from Igor Stravinsky, holed up in Hollywood in the 1940s while he waited in vain for Dylan Thomas to recover from tuberculosis so the pair could write an opera together. --Andrew Mueller
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