Home > Magazine > Content
Reviews: Andi Rae Healy ~ I Guess I Am A Sinner
Posted on Saturday, June 03, 2006 @ 04:33:41 PDT
Topic: Reviews
|
Artist: Andi Rae Healy
CD: I Guess I Am A Sinner
Home: New York City
Style: Alt-Country / Singer-Songwriter
Quote: "Healy clearly thinks like a mature artist, weaving images together into a thematic continuity that is ever-present yet subtle."
By Barney Quick
There’s a thematic tension in Andi Rae Healy’s lyrics that shows up musically as well. In song after song on her second album, I Guess I am A Sinner, she looks at the tight-wire balance between living free and making wrong choices. She delivers this with the voice of someone about to either cry, scream or burst out laughing, while her band couches it in a languid twang. The overall effect is one of down-home ease with a touch of trepidation in the air.
The way it’s all presented is as impressive as indie gets. The cover sports impeccably professional photography and graphics by Andrew H. Walker. Whoever thought of the visual theme of the apples in the photos was on the ball (and made sure they were as red as possible). Producer Sammy Merendino’s sense of how to use the studio to get Healy’s artistic vision across in the most professional manner is spot-on.
Healy can be quite a poet. A line like “With you between my thighs and the dust in my eyes, you’ve made my life this rodeo” (from “Rodeo,” the record’s first cut) ought to be the standard for singer-songwriter rhyme-making.
In the second song, “Rising,” Healy remembers a man who seemed like the source of redemption:
You were my Jesus Christ
I watched you die for me every night ...
and just when I begin my descent once again
you return still shining bright ...
As the album unfolds, the listener is less inclined to believe Healy can find that kind of saving power in a human partner, though. In “Little Flame,” the man is plainly a two-timing scoundrel but a skillful seducer. The lover in “Had To Go” likewise has “a family and a wife,” but this time Healy wistfully recognizes that she could have been good to him and for him. In “One Drop of Rain,” she’s dealing with a man who tries to drag her down in his own insecurities.
“I’m the Devil” looks unflinchingly at a situation in which a man drops a woman because she won’t embrace the particulars of his religion, but not before they’ve been intimate: “Your carnal knowledge of me was ok, when you thought I’d let Jesus in.” There are several lines in this one that flat-out sear, such as “you run from me to protect what you believe” and “what if you’re wrong, and all he wanted was for you to be nice.”
“The Other One” portrays another self-centered adulterer, and “Fooled Me” brings things full circle. The singer is on the verge of casting off all caution for a man whose words and body hold the promise of supreme adventure, but now, unlike the situation in “Rodeo,” she sees too much danger in going with him.
The album’s most musically satisfying moments are the yodel in the chorus of “Rodeo,” as well as the way Healy delivers the line, “Throw my head back and enjoy the ride,” the shimmering minor-key mandolin in “Had to Go,” the gritty alt-country guitar in “I’m The Devil,” and the understated organ in “The Other One.”
Healy clearly thinks like a mature artist, weaving images together into a thematic continuity that is ever-present but subtle. The protagonists in her songs yearn for a high, pure love but understand all too well how tawdry imitations can satisfy nearly as well as the real thing, at least in the short term. Her sense of how to structure a song is clearly seasoned by lots of practice. Memorable refrains come in just when sufficient tension has built at the end of a verse, and in the bridges of some of these numbers she wrings them for unbelievable emotional potential.
This is the kind of album that is both intimate yet radio-friendly. Andi Rae Healy has the chops on all levels and should see lots of good things result from this project.
http://www.andirae.com
|
|
| |
|
