Suzanne Vega - Beauty & Crime
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Free Music Notes for Beauty & Crime
Free Music Review: Back to the Future
Hit: 4 Stars
Six years is a long time between albums for her, but Vega has resurfaced on the venerable jazz label Blue Note, of all places. The songs mostly all present either reflections or anecdotes on New York City - the place and its various personalities and pulses, both present and past - her home since she was a toddler. The approach here is similar to that found on her first two albums twenty years ago, mostly acoustic folk-driven melodies with tasteful electric arrangements and a few rock backings. Her feathery voice hasn't changed in the least and she's as lyrically literate as always.
This is my fourth or fifth listen, and I have to say the album has increasingly grown on me after an initial disappointment; the arrangements are outwardly simple, but the lyrical and rhythmic gravity on many of the songs becomes infectious after a few listens. My favorite has to be the jazzy "Pornographer's Dream", a sensitive rumination on the Zen of an unsavory profession; its subject strangely evokes her song "In the Eye" from the album Solitude Standing where she softly imparts to a street mugger what she'd do if confronted. My only real complaint is that the album is short shrift at only 34 minutes; it seems one should expect more after six years.
Free Music Review: A Suzanne Vega Contribution Is Like Autumn In New York
Hit: 5 Stars
Beauty & Crime is another versatile and creative performance by Suzanne Vega who has again shown her ability to captivate her listeners with catchy and provocative acoustic renditions for the most part centering around a higher level street observation that of course fixates on her beloved NYC. I lived on West 97 Street from 1952 to 1981 when I moved with my new bride to Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn, a quasi city Riviera of sorts. So I know Suzanne's deal which is also infused in my psyche although predictably and mostly due to my love of the vechicle mentality I moved out some 20 years ago in an effort to achieve "The Simple Life".
My favorite selections on Beauty & Crime are the winning cut New York is a Woman which is extremely thoughful in content. Frank and Ava, and Ludlow Street, a song that really taps my own scuffling days downtown are two examples of Suzanne's observational/musical transitional abilities.Additionally and just as a matter of pure speculation, I would humbly suggest purchasing the CD as opposed to ripping it. I would download if we were talking about a bar band debut CD, Suzanne is a historical complement to the music business and all of her countless admirers. I used to live above a Nedicks and would hear the sirens playing their gut wrenching tunes all night, so figuratively I know Suzanne real well and am in a justifiable position to accurately recommend Beauty & Crime as as an astounding CD.
Jay Adler, Music Critic Massapequa, New York
Free Music Review: Disappointing
Hit: 3 Stars
Sorry Suzanne but maybe you sould have waited a little longer (another 6 years) until you had had better material. This is not as good as Songs in Red and Grey. I have been devoted and have waited for every new album since I cant remember when. Upon hearing this one I was ecstatic. Soon however the novelty wore off and was left with the bare bones of a very dull and at times irritating listening experience. Take "Unbound" for example. That's when I reach for the 'That's enaugh switch'.Free Music Review: One of Vega's finest albums with a diverse sound with elements of jazz, folk, etc. mixed in the music
Hit: 5 Stars
Suzanne Vega may be an acquired taste but after you've taken a drink of her latest album, you'll find it both intoxicating and difficult to give up. Admittedly there are those who dislike her hushed vocal delivery (which sounds at times like a female Lou Reed with echoes of Bob Dylan/Leonard Cohen where she isn't trying to "sing" the material so much as "discuss" her observations). I love Vega's delivery so sue me. She's a literate songwriter whose lyrics provide a nice constrast to the music which veers from folk, jazz, elements of techno sometimes within the same song.
"Beauty and Crime" is one of her best albums musically. This concept album about her adopted home New York is a loving and sometimes blunt assessment of the city that surrounds her and has been her muse off and on over the past twenty years. Vega has often taken stylistic detours sometimes off the beaten path like her flirtation with the techno elements that decorated "99.9f" and the smooth samba beat that showed up on "Nine Objects of Desire". Unlike those two albums the production of Jimmy Hogarth is less distracting and self-conscious than those two albums allowing the quality of the songs to shine through. For those that are interested the Japanese release has one extra song that comes in at just under two minutes. It's a good song but you won't miss it (unlike "Golden" from "Songs of Red and Gray) if you purchase the U.S. release of the album.
"Zephyr & I" and "Ludlow Street" have some of the most inviting melodies/arrangements since Vega's breakthrough album. "New York is a Woman" uses a pretty plain metaphor to describe a visitors first visit to the Big Apple. Vega's presentation is pretty straight forward folk outside of the occasional use of horns to decorate the song. "Poronographer's Dream" has an inviting beat and arrangement that echoes nightclub jazz. "Frank & Ava" and the lilting "Bound" are two other highlights. "Unbound" features the type of arrangements that were characteristic of "99.9F" but they are less obtrusive here,
As much as I have enjoyed all of her albums, "Beauty and Crime" is probably one of her most consistent, inviting and musically rich since her first two albums. "Days of Open Hand" was good but didn't extend much beyond "Solitude Standing". "99.9F" played with her sound providing her songs a great diving board to leap off into varied and different musical terrain. That continued on the stylistically diverse and often beautiful "Nine Objects of Desire" and "Songs in Red and Gray". "Beauty & Crime" brings all of this together but, more importantly, does so with the strongest batch of material she has written to date.
For those fans that are interested Vega's website also has a live album recorded for the "Songs in Red and Gray" tour available. It's also available for download from Itunes.
If you disagree, write a review. Remember, these reviews are designed to help people who DON'T have the album decide if they would like to get it NOT if you AGREE OR DISAGREE with the review.
Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne VegaSolitude Standing
Nine Objects of Desire
Free Music Review: Hmm... strange responses indeed
Hit: 5 Stars
Because, judging by the huge number of negative responses to reviews of this album, there's something odd going on here. Clearly, a lot of people just don't like Suzanne Vega, which is fair enough - she's an acquired taste. But, if you like her, this is an excellent outing... sure, it lacks the raw "edge" of her best early work but then she's now in her late 40's and artists mellow with time. Maybe her fans don't like this unfortunate (or fortunate) fact of musical life. Certainly rating an album review on either basis is pretty unfair.
Truth is that, as with her previous albums, it takes time for the underlying strength of her inherently "catchy" tunes to register but, once they do, it's as good as anything else she's released and, fan or not, a pretty good slice of high quality MOR folk/rock. Time for a bit more objectivity...