Tift Merritt - Tambourine
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Tift MerrittEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-08-24
Music Label: Lost Highway
Soundtracks:
- Stray Paper
- Wait It Out
- Good Hearted Man
- Ain't Looking Closely
- Still Pretending
- Write My Ticket
- Your Love Made A U Turn
- Plainest Thing
- Late night Pilgrim
- I Am Your Tambourine
- Laid A Highway
- Shadow In The Way
Free Music Notes for Tambourine
Free Music Review: The brilliant and beautiful Tift Merritt triumphs again!
Hit: 5 Stars
November 25, 2004
As Ms. Merritt's fans know, the angels envy her voice, and she plays guitar as well as she sings. On November 7, 2004, National Public Radio's Sheila Kast introduced Ms. Merritt and her latest CD, "Tambourine," to the "Weekend Edition" faithful. Ms. Kast duly noted Ms. Merritt's equally remarkable debut CD, "Bramble Rose," which is one of the most arrestingly beautiful and literate collections of (eleven) songs that I have ever heard. Although I do not disagree with the "alternative country" moniker, which reviewers have attached to "Bramble Rose," its wonderful individuality defies categorization. It deserves a place on a short list of bright lanterns with which a few great acoustic artists have flagged down and boarded the American music fast freight.
Like "Music From Big Pink," The Band's meteoric first album, "Bramble Rose" is a CD that lovers of idiosyncratic, folk-country-blues-rock will wear out and have to buy again. Ms. Merritt's debut deserves to be mentioned, however, not just with other artists' first works, but also with the more mature offerings of such poets and performers as Doc Watson and James Taylor (two other North Carolina comets), Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton, Steve Goodman, Bonnie Raitt, Kris Kristopherson, Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen, Roseanne Cash, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Shelby Lynne, and Lucinda Williams.
In the course of her interview, Ms. Kast asked Ms. Merritt if her father had taught her to play guitar. I appreciated how she responded, by crediting him with her love of music, and by paying tribute to her mother's love of great writers, such as Eudora Welty. In their conversation, Ms. Merritt remembered her father's affection for Bob Dylan songs. In a previous interview, 1/ she had remembered how she and her father had sung Otis Redding songs together. I was thrilled to learn that Ms. Merritt had drawn "Tambourine" together from her love of the sweet soul music with which I grew up. 2/
While she conversed with Ms. Merritt, Ms. Kast played several excerpts from "Tambourine," such as the rollicking "Good Hearted Man," and "Ain't Looking Closely," and the title track, "(I Am Your) Tambourine." The two others that she chose, "Shadow In the Way," and "Plainest Thing," would fit in well with the earlier eleven that comprise "Bramble Rose," which, by Ms. Merritt's own description, is a quieter and more introspective body of work. The sum of the terrific (twelve) songs that comprise Ms. Merritt's second CD is much more, however, than a follow-up collection of louder and more energetic songs. Like its predecessor, it is an astoundingly original body of work. It will refresh the disciple of Macon-Muscle Shoals-and-Memphis Soul and inspire those who miss that water to revisit that well.
A small group of singer-songwriters has produced a body of work whose instrumental and vocal artistry, infectious melodies, and well-crafted lyrics have captured the hearts and minds of fans and critics alike. "Tambourine" should admit Ms. Merritt to membership in an even smaller company of artists whose inspiring works prove to be both critically acclaimed and commercially viable. Ms. Merritt refuses to bend to the average "mainstream country" station's preference for assembly-line drivel. Her talent for setting intelligent lyrics to memorable music is amazing and endearing. I can hardly wait for her next offering.
1/ Ms. Merritt gave that previous interview to a contributor to Music World's "On the Scene" column, who did not sign his article.[...]
2/ With a certainty that rarely offends, Macon natives proudly recognize Otis Redding as the greatest of all soul singers. Also a fine songwriter, Otis Redding penned such classics as "Respect," with which Aretha Franklin shook the "house that Jack built." (Legions of Ray Charles' fans know that he was the real "Jack," the real architect of the Soul Music house). The Rolling Stones jumped from another pillar of the Otis Redding songbook, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," on to the stage of The Ed Sullivan Show and into Rock n Roll immortality. When Otis wrote his most famous song, the posthumously released "Dock of the Bay," he turned his yearning for home into a ballad that the whole world loves to sing. In celebrating Georgia, it has only one rival, the Hoagie Carmichael classic, "Georgia On My Mind" (which Ray Charles made his own).
Tambourine Poster
Merritt's resonant if somewhat conventionally alt-country debut Bramble Rose did little to predict this blue-eyed-soul breakout. A mix of hard-charging guitar rockers, horn-charted grooves, and pensive singer-songwriter ballads, Tambourine might have resulted in a stylistic hodge-podge, but producer George Drakoulias lends the same punchy, live-tracked vitality that distinguished the best work of the Jayhawks, Black Crowes, and Maria McKee. Merritt taps deep into her southern musical roots to find her own voice, and that voice has fully blossomed--her enunciation is clearer, her phrasing sensual without straining. Her best songs balance the urgent economy of classic soul singles with a personal, if not precisely confessional, intensity. Like Van Morrison and Dusty Springfield, Merritt follows her country, soul, and rock & roll instincts to find a single ecstatic sound, one that culminates in the full-out gospel testimony of "Shadow in the Way." Tambourine may not quite live up to the Dusty in Memphis comparisons, but it may very well wind up the album of Tift Merritt's career. --Roy KastenClassic Rock Music CDs
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