Kelly Willis - Translated From Love
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Kelly WillisEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-06-26
Music Label: Rykodisc
Soundtracks:
- Nobody Wants To Go To The Moon Anymore
- Sweet Little One
- Don't Know Why
- Teddy Boys
- Losing You
- Too Much To Lose
- The More That I'm Around You
- Sweet Sundown
- Success
- Stone's Throw Away
- I Must Be Lucky
- Translated From Love
Free Music Notes for Translated From Love
Free Music Review: After maternal cocooning, Kelly's full of piss and vineagar once again
Hit: 5 Stars
My remarks are intended to place this album in a capsule career history for those unfamiliar with Kelly Willis' work. Austin's Kelly Willis is one of the great rockin' honky tonky fillies, who emerged in the 90's to take her place besides peers like Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynne, Carlene Carter and Rosanne Cash, as gals with just enough testosterone to seem to be picking up the fallen baton of 50's renegade rockabilly babes, Wanda Jackson and Janice Martin (a concert ticket with the latter's name appears on Willis' debut, implicitly stating a claim to that legacy). An exceptionally pretty, freckled and wholesome-looking strawberry blonde - one year People mag named her among its top 50 most beautiful individuals - she seemed poised for big things commercially in C & W for a time in the late 90's, rather like Shelby Lynne. Her first two albums for MCA are dominated by not entirely convincing pop rockabilly in which Kelly's essentially cheery and well-adjusted personality shines through undermining any pretense that she is a bad girl who could truly get down and dirty. On her third, final and finest major label album, the eponymously named Kelly Willis, Kelly realized all her potential: she found her true forte, bittersweet, poignant ballads, to place alongside the rockers; the tempos, instrumentation and cover material were more varied; and the love songs lyrically deepened and were sung in a more emotionally affecting manner. (This progress seems largely related to the fact she had ditched her husband, drummer and song-writing collaborator - a well-meaning mediocrity with good taste but not quite enough talent - sometime before and learned something about disappointment and heartbreak, presumably.) This great album failed again to breakthrough commercially, leaving her a cult figure to carry on her career with indie labels. Her initial indie album for Rykodisc in the late 90's, What I Deserve, most consider her finest and it showed the same strengths, if not actually built upon them further.
Unfortunately, for her fans, Kelly remarried and began reproducing and disappeared from sight for a few years and these developments both derailed her career and made her boring. Her second and penultimate album, Easy should have been called Easy Listening because it is a series of somnolent, if sometimes lovely, ballads. It is uterine music obviously the product of excess estrogen. Fortunately for her fans, Kelly has since divorced - heartbreak is unquestionably good for her art - and she is raising three boys, not girls, so the testosterone flows freely again, balancing out things hormonally. Well, Translated From Love represents a tremendous comeback from the career misstep of Easy: Kelly is clearly done with her maternal cocooning and has emerged from her chrysalis full of piss and vinegar and is rocking again, in her rough and tumble way, and bending hearts with her moving ballads. (As for the details, I defer to the other reviewers.)
Hallelujah.
Translated From Love Poster
Kelly Willis returns after five years with the much-anticipated Translated From Love. Produced by long-time collaborator Chuck Prophet, Translated From Love is Willis' most sonically adventurous album to date. Prophet says of Willis, She's one of those singers who can make a track come alive. She's got that kind of charisma. Translated From Love gives nods to five decades of rock, pop and country with `60s girl group drum sounds one minute and strings-drenched C&W angst the next. Its 12 tracks are comprised of originals, intriguing and unexpected covers (including a vintage Vox organ-fueled take on Iggy Pop's Success and Adam Green's retro-cool Teddy Boys) plus collaborations with Prophet, acclaimed singer songwriter Jules Shear and Kelly's husband, ace country songwriter Bruce Robison. Says Willis, I didn't want to feel like I was doing the same old thing; I want people to do a double-take when they listen to this, but most of all I just wanted to go in and have fun.With her vocal twang and timbre, Kelly Willis will never sound anything but country. Even so, she's long been adventurous in her choice of material, and her first release in five years is her most expansive to date, as collaborations with producer/guitarist Chuck Prophet and songwriter Jules Shear (who also provides backing vocals) bring a freshness to her signature style. Half of these cuts could have fit on a previous Willis album; the other half wouldn't have fit on any of them--yet somehow they all fit together. The biggest surprise is a cover of Iggy Pop's "Success," with an arrangement that channels the Sir Douglas Quintet's Vox keyboards (with the Gourds contributing to the call-and-response). Other twists include the propulsive pop lilt of "Nobody Wants to Go to the Moon Anymore," the touch of Phil Spector girl-group grandeur in "Don't Know Why," the Chuck Berry guitar and gender reversal of "Teddy Boys," and the hint of Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" in "The More That I'm Around You." With results that transcend category, Willis sounds like an artist renewed. --Don McLeese
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