Lilith Fair: A Celebration Of Women In Music, Not As Good As I Experienced It

The Good: Some great performances by some wonderful musical artists
The Bad: Some lousy performances by some mediocre musical artists
The Basics: Track by track a hit-or-miss album, this is a sampler of women and their guitars performing at Lilith Fair concerts with mixed results.


The very first concert I ever went to was Lilith Fair in Canandaigua, New York. I had graduated college the December before, I was poor, working in an art supply store and recovering from an illness I had had for years. Heather Nova was performing on the second stage and I had been listening to her masterpiece, Siren (reviewed here!) for months as I recuperated and Canandaigua was only twenty-five miles from where I was living. I could not not go. I bought tickets. Then I won some off a local radio station. Regardless, I was going and it was pretty wonderful for me. I mention this because I want to make it clear from the outset that I'm a fan of the Lilith Fair idea and experience.

So, it seemed pretty natural that I would pick up Lilith Faith - A Celebration of Women in Music, a two disc c.d. set featuring 13 tracks (just under 55 minutes of music) and 12 tracks (just under 49 minutes) featuring artist performances from some of the Lilith Fair concerts. Proceeds from purchasing this c.d. go to RAINN, which is a worthy organization to be sure. The important thing to note about this two-disc "Lilith Fair" set is that it is not Lilith Fair, it's a recording. As such, I'm reviewing it as a collection of live tracks from female artists who appear on it.

As the title suggests, this is a collection of live tracks from all female artists, though the range of those artists is somewhat limited. The album opens with Paula Cole, who likely was put there based on her prominence with "This Fire," which was hot at the time. Similarly, The Cardigans are near the front of the first disc, which suggests they were still enjoying their brief popularity in the mainstream when this was released. Of course, Sarah McLachlan pops up on the album, as do Suzanne Vega, Susanna Hoffs (former lead singer of The Bangles), Indigo Girls, Dar Williams and Lisa Loeb.

Mixed in with well known acts, or recognizable artists like Shawn Colvin, Meredith Brooks and Joan Osborne, are an assortment of performers whose one-hit never launched them into one-hit wonder status. This collection is a place where one may hear the works of Autour de Lucie, Lhasa, Patty Griffin, Yungchen Lhamo, and Victoria Williams. Sadly, it turns out virtual unknown Dayna Manning was at the Lilith Fair I attended and she left so little impression that I did not recognize her work on this two-disc set.

So, this is a concept that is clever and difficult to pull off; Sarah McLachlan hopes to get people to purchase this two-disc set based on the strength of known performers and lure them into listening to other artists. It's a good idea and this album just about pulls that off. Wisely, McLachlan and her associated artists give the listener something generally new and different from their repertoire on this album.

So, for example, Meredith Brooks does not perform "Bitch," but rather a song called "Wash My Hands." Lisa Loeb does not perform her megahit "Stay (I Miss You)," but gives the listener "Falling In Love." Joan Osborne distances herself from "One Of Us" with "Ladder" and Paula Cole presents a live version of "Mississippi" that proves that her strength on the album is not produced, but rather a product of her own abilities.

Some of the artists (virtually all of the performers wrote their own music) perform their one-hits or their most popular recognizable tracks. So, for example, I recognized Abra Moore's song "Four Leaf Clover" from the brief time that received radio airplay. Susanna Hoffs opted for a live version of The Bangles's "Eternal Flame" (it's quite wonderful) and Sarah McLachlan performs "Building A Mystery," sounding distinctly different from Mirrorball (reviewed here!). In another sad note, it's quite possible I saw Tracy Bonham perform "The One," as she does on this set, but it left so little impression with me that it seemed new to me when I heard it here.

The album sounds exactly like what one would surmise it would coming from Lilith Fair. It's a lot of women. Women with guitars. Almost universally, the tracks are a woman, usually with a guitar, singing her heart out. Some of the tracks have the usual live conceit of the audience responding to open or close the track or they have the artist speaking to the audience, but largely it's a woman with a guitar rocking her heart out.

This is combined with the occasional foreign language track, usually sounding like a tribal chant of some sort, as Yungchen Lhamo's "Lama Dorje Chang" is. The result is that this is a remarkably inconsistent album. Track to track, its hit or miss. I think there are more hits, but it's unlikely this two-disc set will be palatable to those who do not have a love of female pop-rock or folk-rock artists. That's pretty much what it is.

There are some decent unknowns on here, as well. Frankly, I like the Tracy Bonham song "The One" and I was glad to hear it on this set.

But largely, this was a wash for me and ultimately, my recommendation for this album came down to the idea that I liked where some of the money from the sale of this was going. No doubt there are places online you can rip your favorite songs from without listening to some of the more mediocre tracks, but then RAINN doesn't get its cut and you're not opening up to any other artists.

The best tracks are "Eternal Flame" by Susanna Hoffs on disc one and "What Do You Hear In These Sounds?" by Dar Williams on disc two (it sounds distinctly different from her live rendition of the same song on Out There Live, reviewed here!). The weakest links are "Lhasa" by El Payande (disc 1) and the awful, squeaky closer, "Periwinkle Sky" by Victoria Williams (Disc 2).

For other live albums, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Tina Live In Europe - Tina Turner
Live - James Taylor
In Philadelphia - Wilson Pickett

6/10

Check out how this album stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from best to worst.

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Grumble. . . Lisa Loeb, Why Do You Have To Be So Good With Your Cake AND Pie?!

The Good: Lyrics, Vocals, Overall feel of album
The Bad: Short, One or two lackluster tracks.
The Basics: Cake And Pie is another successful outing by Lisa Loeb that could make my regular readers believe I've gone soft on my standards (but I haven't!).


In my case, I would hope that if reputation were to reflect reality, my reputation would be one for generally balanced reviews along the rating spectrum. My body of work is generally balanced and by a sizable number, most of my reviews are 5/10 reviews because of my basic philosophy that most experiences ought to fall around the average. The reason I am bringing this up now is that I've hit a patch of reviews across the spectrum of things I review that have been overwhelmingly positive all of a sudden. I've been reviewing amazing episodes of The X-Files, Jelly Belly jelly beans, and the music of Lisa Loeb. And Loeb has been surprising me with consistently good albums (some of which I have reviewed, but not yet posted). With her album Cake And Pie, Lisa Loeb continues that tradition of decent albums, resulting in yet another one I would (at worst) recommend.

With only a dozen songs, clocking in at 44:41, Cake And Pie is another Lisa Loeb album that manages to defy (quite well) the perception listeners might have of Lisa Loeb as a pop-rock singer. On Cake And Pie, Loeb rocks far more often than she pops and the tracks have more of an electric guitar feel and sound to them than acoustic, which defined the two albums she released prior to this one. Cake And Pie is also notable in that it is the album least represented on The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb, which is unfortunate, because there are several tracks on this album that could hold their own with the best tracks on other Loeb albums.

Lisa Loeb is integral to the creation of the music on Cake And Pie. She co-wrote or wrote all of the songs on the album. As well, she plays guitar on most of the tracks and provides lead vocals as well as some of her own harmony vocals. In other words, it is hard to argue that this is not Loeb's musical vision.

The songs on Cake And Pie tend to be more produced than any other Lisa Loeb songs. So, for example, even the near-acoustic "Drops Me Down" has keyboards that augment Loeb's vocals and accent the loneliness of the lyrics. Whereas prior albums might have let the track be an actual acoustic performance, this album experiments with filling the album out with sound. the result is a number of songs that sound more fleshed out than one might expect from Lisa Loeb.

As well, the instrumentals on Cake And Pie tend to be richer, certainly than Loeb's radio hits. Songs like "We Could Still Belong Together," "The Way It Really Is," and "Bring Me Up" utilize electric guitars to accent the energy and occasional anger of the lines that Loeb is singing.

On the lyric front, Cake And Pie is another Lisa Loeb album that derives much of its strength from the poetics of the lyrics. The lyrics change up between story songs in a more folk tradition (like "Kick Start") to raw emotive poems, like "The Way It Really Is." On that song, Loeb delivers a number of punchy lines that leap out, like "You said: / 'You're crazy, why do you keep doing this? / Everything is fine.' / Then I think, I'm crazy / I do this all the time / Until I start to think that nothing's even wrong / Maybe I am / Hiding in my own confusion / Maybe we're just / A picture in my head / Maybe what if it could be / The way I wish it really was / Maybe I don't wanna see it / The way it really is" ("The Way It Really Is"). Part of the strength of the song is how Loeb does not rely on typical and obvious rhymes, concentrating instead on the meanings of what she wants to sing about as opposed to composing around a rhyme scheme.

Even when "The Way It Really Is" becomes repetitive with the chorus, Loeb manages to pull it off (and those who read my music reviews know that's saying something as I loathe over-repetition!). She chooses just the right words on this album to accent and even the closing to "You Don't Know Me" does not annoy me with its repetition.

Loeb also goes thematically more edgy than she has been on Cake And Pie, at least with the lyrics. Instead of moping through the breakups, as she does on some of her other albums, here she expresses some of the discord that breaks couples up. On "We Could Still Belong Together," she opens with the angsty lines "If I hold my breath / If I shut my eyes / If I disappear / Just for the afternoon / If I can't help shouting / If I lock you out / If it's not important / Completely unimportant / To anyone else but me." This represents a fairly new frontier for Loeb and it turns out she is equally adept at expressing dissatisfaction in relationships with loss afterward. In fact, "Payback" reads like a laundry list of a wronged lover not to reconcile with a former love interest!

Perhaps lyrically, the most compelling track might be the album closer, "She's Falling Apart." On that song, Loeb sings a story-song about a young woman whose life is fracturing and she combines it with remarkably universal lines that make the song bigger than it might initially sound. When she sings "They pull up their chairs to the table / She stares at the food on her plate / At the toast and the butter / Her father, her mother, she pushes away / And they rise in the morning / And they sleep in the dark / And even though nobody's looking / She's falling apart / She gets home from school too early / And closes the door to her room / There's nothing inside her / She's weak and she's tired of feeling like this" ("She's Falling Apart"), it's hard to not relate and empathize with that awkward coming-of-age time in life. Loeb has the power to articulate well some of the more primal and problematic aspects of young adulthood and make adults care about such things again.

Generally, the album puts Loeb in the lower range of her vocal abilities, so most of the vocals are more alto than sugary soprano. This lends itself well to the themes on Cake And Pie as it's hard to be angsty with soprano vocals and electric guitars, at least when presenting faster tracks. Loeb manages the vocals well.

In fact, the only song that instantly struck a discord with me in terms of quality was "Too Fast Driving." On that song, Loeb sounds like she might be attempting to be Liz Phair or Sheryl Crow and the track has a somewhat banal pop sound to it that does not fit the rest of the album.

For sure, Cake And Pie is not Loeb's best musical outing, but it is also underrated, making the listener wonder just what the record label (which dropped her after this album flopped) was looking for when they released this one. Anyone who likes women who rock and who are able to translate folk-rock storysong sensibilities to rock and roll instrumentals will likely find something on this album to enjoy. And if this is truly the worst Loeb's got, it still makes one wonder how it is she isn't far more commercially successful.

The best track is "The Way It Really Is," the low point is "Too Fast Driving."

For other works by Lisa Loeb, check out my reviews of:
Tails
Firecracker
Catch The Moon with Elizabeth Mitchell
The Way It Really Is
The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb

7/10

For other music reviews, be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Lisa Loeb Tells Listeners The Way It Really Is And Gets It (Mostly) Right!

The Good: Good voice, Decent instrumentals, Nice lyrics, Decent balance between production and natural sounds
The Bad: Sounds derivative on a number of tracks, SHORT!
The Basics: Surprisingly good, though short, The Way It Really Is solidifies Lisa Loeb as a vital singer-songwriter in the current generation.


Lisa Loeb is one of those artists I am pretty surprised it has taken me so long to get around to listening to; I have enjoyed her few radio hits and now that I am taking in her recorded library, I am finding myself pleasantly surprised that her works are as good as they are. Sometimes, I find myself wondering about how much my reviews change between the first listen and the eighth or more. I generally try to hold off reviewing an album until I have listened to it at least eight times. In the case of The Way It Really Is, I find myself wondering if that's the right way to do things.

The reason I am in this somewhat murky moral territory on the issue is that my initial listen to this album left me feeling much more ambivalent to it than I do now. In fact, now I'm positively glowing about it. The thing is, I'm not sure if that means it is just that good and I did not hear it for what it was as quickly as I ought to have or if I have just become more familiar with it from the repetition. After all, when one is used to something it generally becomes a part of us easier. I'm thinking that with The Way It Really Is, I'm actually enjoying the album quite a bit because when I listened to The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb this morning, I found there were tracks from this album I missed more than off any other album of Loeb's I've listened to.

With only eleven tracks, clocking in at a paltry 37:18, The Way It Really Is is perhaps most hampered by its short duration than anything qualitatively wrong with the work represented on the songs. As one might expect from a Lisa Loeb album - if there are such things as expectations for this strangely obscure musical artist - Loeb wrote or co-wrote every song on the album. In fact, the striking difference from many of Loeb's albums might be just how collaborative the writing is on this one. She only solo wrote four of the songs. She does, however, perform the lead vocals on all eleven songs as well as providing her own background vocals on most of the tracks. She defers on the instrumentals more than on prior albums, though she plays acoustic guitar on nine of the tracks and "additional piano" on one. She produced or co-produced ten of the songs. In other words, this is very much the musical vision of Lisa Loeb.

The Way It Really Is is a decent collection of musical musings and Loeb opens the album with one of the songs that rocks harder than those unfamiliar with her albums might expect. "Window Shopping" starts out with a familiar, folksy sound, then erupts with electric guitars and a rich produced sound that instantly changes the perceptions one might have on the demur nature of Lisa Loeb. Yes, on The Way It Really Is, Lisa Loeb rocks!

As always with my perception of music, the spark has to start with the lyrics. The Way It Really Is is lyrically impressive on most of the tracks, continuing Loeb's mix of decent diction, emotive poetry and story songs. She sings primarily about relationships ("Window Shopping," "I Control The Sun"), though some of the songs take a broader interpretation and perspective to include ambition and support ("Try") and the fascination with abomination ("Accident"). As with some of the prior albums, she has question songs ("Would You Wander") and a mix of pop-rock and folk-rock writing sensibilities.

For example, on "Accident," she sings with lines that are more along the lines of what one might expect from a folk-rock story song. She sings about "The heiress introduced / She waltzes in her ballroom / swirling in her sequins, showing off her gown. / She steps on her own train, / She falls. / She cracks her jaw. / Aghast, her husband giggles. / She gasps, 'She slipped on spilled champagne" ("Accident"). In addition to not being so concerned about rhyme schemes, Loeb uses words like "aghast," which might not exactly be a 1600 SAT word, but it's smarter than most of the diction on pop-rock tracks these days. From the intricately set-up story, Loeb leads to a more universal exploration of how people become fascinated with broken things and damaged people and it becomes a remarkably insightful song.

One of the real bits of magic on The Way It Really Is is how the music and lyrics combine. Loeb is remarkably adept at combining the sound and feel of lyrics with music that reflects the anger ("Window Shopping") or longing of a song ("Try"). So, on "Try," Loeb plays a slow, piano-driven ballad as she wanders through the stanzas to get to the heartbreaking refrain with passages like "Your girlfriend never smiles, no one ever calls. / You begin to wonder if they were your friends at all. / You frown, you take a look around. / You shout, this'll never get better. / But the doubt that you grow in your field is sprouting / Turning your field into a deeper valley / You'd find / The mountains aren't so high / If you'd only try / to do better" ("Try"). The mix of the longing vocals, the intimate piano and the expressive lyrics create a stark mood that shows at least as well as it tells the musical story Loeb is singing. Frankly, there are too few musical artists who are able to do that these days.

The whole concept that made me wonder if I am enjoying the album more from the repetition comes up mostly with the last track, "Now I Understand." "Now I Understand" was one of those tracks that passed me by the first few listens. I listen to most of my c.d.s on repeat so I'd know I hit the end when "Window Shopping" (great way to start the album, by the way) came back up. "Now I Understand" was just part of the white noise of the late tracks (which is a terrible mischaracterization of the end of this album).

Then I actually heard it. Loeb sings a fairly rockin' track that is far better than most of the pop-rock that was playing on the radio in 2004, which makes me wonder why this was not a single and a huge radio hit for Loeb. After all, she has a pretty universal sentiment when she sweetly sings, "I didn't get what I expected. / Reached out and I got rejected. / I couldn't have it cause I checked it off. / Felt sad. I didn't understand it. / Why would this happen to me? / But my heart, it didn't stop. / It beat on and on and on. / Now I understand that my heart doesn't stop / Even though it feels like it could explode" ("Now I Understand"). Loeb is an adept lyricist - much more than I thought she might be before I started going through her albums - and she has a lot to sing about. "Now I Understand" is a beautiful pinprick to the balloon of childhood notions of love and romance. It is clever, well-written and well-performed.

If there is any real problem with the music (outside the lack of duration) it is how derivative the album sounds of the works of other artists. For example, on the amazing album closer "Now I Understand," Loeb sounds like she is emulating Aimee Mann. I'm not overly tuned in to Mann's works, but this song sounds like it is right off the Magnolia Soundtrack (reviewed here!). Similarly, "Hand-Me-Downs" and "Fools Like Me" sound remarkably familiar and I'm thinking that they might be reminding me of Liz Phair's work.

Vocally, Loeb does not seem to challenge herself much in terms of range on The Way It Really Is, but she has more than just a sugary pop sound, so the album is quite listenable. As well, the songs are not all guitar-driven, so Loeb seems to be growing as a musician. Anyone who likes a good female singer-songwriter or, hell, a decent singer-songwriter, The Way It Really Is is a great way to go. In fact, from my experiences so far, if I had to pick one Lisa Loeb album to put in a collection alongside her "best of" album, it would be this one. No question.

The best track is "Now I Understand," the low point is probably "Probably," just because I become annoyed with repetition.

For other works by Lisa Loeb, check out my reviews of:
Tails
Firecracker
Catch The Moon with Elizabeth Mitchell
The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb

7.5/10

Check out how this stacks up against every other piece of music I have reviewed by visiting my specialized Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the music I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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"Heh! Chick Thinks She Can Rock!" Lisa Loeb Does, With Tails!

The Good: Decent lyrics, Good vocals, Some decent moments of musical invention
The Bad: Short, Some simplistic tracks.
The Basics: A fairly solid debut, Tails justifies Lisa Loeb's mainstream success and implies there are even better things coming for those who stick with her.


Every month I immerse myself in a few new (to me) artists and I do my best to select a pretty diverse range of artists and albums in order to experience as much of what is out there as possible. This month, I am starting with Lisa Loeb, whose work I have only had a passing familiarity with. I was fortunate enough to be able to start with her mainstream debut, Tails.

Tails, credited to Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories, is the album that came out of having the number one smash hit "Stay," which originally appeared on a soundtrack. Interesting nugget I learned while looking into Loeb to choose her as one of my artists to become obsessed with for a few days; she is the first singer-songwriter to have a single top the Billboard Hot 100 without having a recording contract. She might not be the only one now, but she was the first and that is impressive in its own right. Given that Tails was nowhere near as successful as "Stay" was in terms of staying on the charts, Lisa Loeb might appear to simply be a bit of mid-90's trivia, alongside such acts as Savage Garden and the Spin Doctors. Listening to Tails now, I would have to argue that her status as a one-hit wonder is one of the more unfortunate examples of the label.

With thirteen tracks, clocking in at 43:55, Tails is an auspicious debut for Lisa Loeb. Loeb wrote all of the songs, which is always impressive for a young singer-songwriter's debut. As well, she provides all of the lead vocals, does most of her own harmony vocals and plays acoustic and electric guitar on the album. As well, she receives a co-producing credit for twelve of the thirteen songs, which is pretty impressive as well. In other words, this certainly seems to be the musical vision of Lisa Loeb.

It is a decent collection, as well. Loeb is a decent writer and she has a good sensibility for both expressing emotions and telling stories. In many ways, Loeb seems to have the writing sensibilities of a folk-rock artist in terms of the way she literally tells stories in her songs. Almost half the songs have characters with dialogue, which is a rather rare thing for a pop-rock performance. The songs that are not packed with characters tend to be emotive poems with a fairly direct theme.

Loeb has the ability to make such themes hit home well. First, she has excellent vocabulary and diction to express poetically precise emotions. For example, on the opening track, "It's Over," she expresses a real sense of disenchantment and loss when she sings "Don't stultify. / Don't hold me high. / Too many things held precious, / Too many things held dear; / That's what I hate, / That's what I fear. / Too much to ask for / May leave me feeling lonely. / Too little leaves me nothing . . ." As can be seen, in addition to having something to say and an impressive level of diction to express it (she uses semicolons!), she has universal emotions she is singing about. Even on songs that do not necessarily grab me, like "Lisa Listen," which is another track overcome with lonely lyrics, she writes poignant lines.

The nice thing about Tails is that the album is not limited to the well-known tracks for decent lines. It is somewhat surprising that her questioning song "Do You Sleep?" did not do better on the charts. After all, the sentiments of longing and second-guessing are fairly universal. In that song, Loeb articulately asks, "Do you eat, sleep, do you breathe me anymore? / Do you sleep, do you count sheep anymore? / . . . Do you take plight on my tongue like lead? / Do you fall gracefully into bed anymore? / I saw you as you walked across my room, / You looked out the window, you looked at the moon. . . ." ("Do You Sleep?"). And while Loeb's rhymes may be somewhat simple, that sense of being abandoned and struggling to wrench away from the other person is rather universal. Loeb expresses powerfully with the questions that undertone many people who have been left feel in regard to wondering how the person who left gets on and how their new partners treat them relative to the one left. "Do You Sleep?" is direct and yet open to interpretations, which makes for a powerfully worthwhile track.

This is not to neglect the musical stories Loeb tells on Tails. The emotive songs might initially appear more universal, but the sentiments expressed through the story songs. "Hurricane," which might well be the best of them, is painful because it is not so much dialogue as a prophecy to the musical protagonist and her reaction. It is harsh and poetic and listening to it, one gets the sense that Loeb is a woman who has been hurt in a number of ways and uses her art as catharsis.

And in general, the musical stories and the poems mix well to make a fairly decent album. Part of the problem, though, is that Loeb is a somewhat erratic writer on Tails. While she is remarkably expressive, she resorts to some lame rhymes and dull repetitions. For example, on "Waiting For Wednesday," she repeats "show you good-bye" ten times in the 3:09 song and the title eleven times. It falls flat and is irksome to listen to as it replays poorly.

That said, songs like that are generally the exception on this short album. For the most part, the writing is decent and Loeb does not resort to excessive repetitions in order to fill time.

Loeb has a good voice and despite some of the more electric instrumentals, she manages to be heard and articulate well throughout the entire album. Instead of presenting vocals that are as demure and declarative as she did on "Stay," she mixes it up. She has an angry tone that is well backed with electric guitars on "Taffy. On that song, she manages to do some somewhat primal vocalizing and it works far better than other musical expressions without words that I have heard recently.

Instrumentally, Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories mix it up with the guitars so that track to track there is a decent amount of diversity within the confines of a guitar, bass, drums ensemble. The songs range from the more folk-rock sound of "Stay" and "Hurricane" to more pop-rock, flat-out rock of "Taffy" and "When All The Stars Were Falling."

Tails is not the greatest debut of all time, but there is enough in the album to illustrate that Loeb has some serious talent and potential for what she lacks in experience. Anyone who likes pop-rock singer-songwriters will likely find something to enjoy on Tails.

The best track is "Hurricane," the low point is "Waiting For Wednesday."

For other works by Lisa Loeb, check out my reviews of:
Firecracker
Catch The Moon with Elizabeth Mitchell
The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb

6.5/10

For other music reviews, be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Lisa Loeb's Less Inspired Outing: The Book/CD Catch The Moon.

The Good: Vocals are decent, "Stop And Go" is interesting
The Bad: Poor replayability, Phrasing in book is awkward, Short, Somewhat uninspired musical choices.
The Basics: With few truly different interpretations on traditional children's songs, a dull book and multicultural children's songs pushed to the back, Catch The Moon flops.


For those who might not know, the way that I manage to live these days as a writer and a reviewer and still review about twenty compact discs a month is that I have a pretty awesome local library which seems to get a perverse thrill out of filling interlibrary loan requests for me. As a result, almost every day there is something new for me at the library and I often do not know what it will be. This month, I am reviewing the works of Lisa Loeb and because there were very few of her works in the local system, the interlibrary loan request went nationwide.

It was quite a surprise for me - and the librarians who know of my loathing of children - to get in Catch The Moon, a children's book and compact disc featuring music by Lisa Loeb and Elizabeth Mitchell (the book is by Erin Courtney and Bonnie Brooke Mitchell. This falls into the same category of fairly loathsome discs I have found in my artist searches like Saturday Morning Cartoons and Mary Had A Little Amp. Catch The Moon puts me in my usual bind; reviewing albums for children as an adult can be real difficult, especially if one of the things one loathes about children is how inane things surrounding them may be. In the case of children's music, as well, it is tough for me to evaluate because the lyrics are necessarily simplistic and thus somewhat banal.

With thirteen tracks, clocking in as 31:43, Catch The Moon is most obviously not the unique work of Lisa Loeb or Elizabeth Mitchell. Out of the thirteen songs, Loeb wrote only one on her own, co-wrote three others - usually with Mitchell. The rest of the songs are traditional or are written by other artists, like Stephen Foster ("Oh Susanna") or Bob Dylan ("New Morning"). Loeb sings on all of the tracks, save one (though on three she is relegated to harmonies) and she plays banjo or guitar on several of the tracks. There are no production credits on the album, so it is impossible to discern how much of the album is within the pair's control and how happy they were with the results.

The songs on Catch The Moon are an interesting range of folk songs, like "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "Oh Susanna" and more obvious children's songs, like "Little Red Caboose" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." The album goes decently multicultural with Spanish, Japanese and French traditional tracks, "La Manita," "Donguri," and "Fais Do Do." The songs are generally lyrically simple and highly repetitive, making for a rather dull listening experience.

Songs like "Oh Groundhog" are remarkably repetitive and come late in the album after annoying songs like "Little Red Caboose" has plagued the listener with a problematic amount of repetition. That song is comprised mostly of the lines "Little red caboose / Little red caboose / Riding behind the train" ("Little Red Caboose") over and over and over again. It is easy to get tired of it quickly, especially with the annoying cooing "choo choo!" after each and every utterance of the word "train."

As for the more obvious tracks like "Oh Susanna" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," Loeb and Mitchell's interpretations of the songs are not terribly different from anyone else's and the sugary light vocals quickly become tiresome. The more original tracks, like Loeb's own "Butterfly" are relegated to the back half of the album and are treated like b-sides. Clearly, the songs that most people are more familiar with are designed to drive the album and in this case, it falls a bit flat because the interesting tracks are treated like detritus for the listener who bothers to stick around for them.

But as far as album arrangement does, Catch The Moon is a poor choice for those who might want to have their child fall asleep with the album on a loop. "Fais Do Do" is an obvious lullaby that follows on the heels of the more energetic "Free Little Bird" and any hope that Young One might fall asleep to "Fais Do Do" when the album is set to replay over and over again is shattered by the louder and more obvious guitars of "Big Rock Candy Mountain." The thing is, given the energy of "Free Little Bird" and its preceding tracks, it's a tough sell to predict that "Fais Do Do" might knock the little kids out, which encourages parents to simply replay it, which is just as likely to wake them back up. Similarly, putting the lullaby "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" right before the energetic and instructional "Stop And Go" is utterly ridiculous. The album is poorly arranged for those who want a recording to stimulate, then sedate, a child.

On that note, though, it is worth noting that Catch The Moon is a decent album when it hits "Stop And Go." This original track is simply a fun collection of strummings and commands that allows children to listen and learn to follow directions like "stop," "go," "shake," "jump," etc. It's actually a fun track for people of any age, but it does not stimulate adults to actually shake (or do anything but listen).

As for the book, it is ten thick cardboard pages long and tells the story of Ruby West and Ella Jane who are out looking at the moon. They play and try to catch stars and throw the moon and dance around. It's pretty basic stuff and I'm not exactly sure what the point of the book is other than to get young girls to notice that there are stars and a moon in the sky.

However, the way it goes about that might be a bit problematic, especially for the younger readers. There are awkward phrases, like ". . . dream by star moon light" which is poetic and nice, but strangely complicated for children. My mother is a pre-kindergarten teacher and she thought that the indirect phrasing might lead children to not quite get the meaning (she thought the rest of it was about up to industry standards).

But for me, the book and album combination fall a bit short. I suppose if I'm being subjected to this much children's music, I'd like more that is either truly original or the artists to do something different and impressive enough to justify the outing. Compact discs can hold quite a bit of information and it would have been nice to hear Loeb and Mitchell fill the album up as opposed to keeping it underdeveloped and sugary.

The best track is "Stop And Go," the low point is the unmemorable "La Maniba."

For other works by Lisa Loeb or children’s albums, check out my reviews of:
Firecracker
The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb
Sesame Street Platinum All-Time Favorites


3.5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of the albums and singles I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Not Quite All The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb (But Almost Close Enough)!

The Good: Decent mix of radio hits, Good voice, Nice lyrics
The Bad: Somewhat basic instrumentals (does not capture Loeb's full range).
The Basics: Surprisingly good, The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb is a wonderful reflection of the musical artist, even though it doesn't illustrate all her truly best tracks.


It's a rare opportunity for me where I get virtually all of the works of an artist in and then their "Best of" album comes in for me to evaluate right around the same time. The reason this is a treat for me is simple: I can very easily look at my most recent music reviews and recall my favorite tracks off each album and compare them to what ended up on the "best of" album. In the case of The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb, this is a remarkably easy thing for me to compare: I've been listening to her pretty much nonstop for the last week.

The verdict on The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb is very easy for me to make simple and direct: this is an album with Loeb's most recognizable tracks off all of her albums at the time, but it in no way reflects her best-written or performed works. For example, the superlative tracks off the albums Tails and The Way It Really Is, "Hurricane" and "Now I Understand" are noticeably absent from this compilation. So, from a literal perspective, this is not, in fact, The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb. However, if one were condemned to prison with the ability to take only on Lisa Loeb album with them, this might be the best choice to meet those criteria. And, to be honest, out of all of the compilation albums I have heard in my life, this one might be one of the better ones as far as sounding like the music belongs together in the order it is. In other words, more than just sounding like a random collection of hits thrown together, The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb actually sounds like a complete album with its own messages, themes and sense of cohesion.

With eighteen tracks, clocking in at a second over an hour, The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb might be light on the "very best," but it certainly is definitive Loeb. All of the tracks are written or co-written by Loeb (the majority have her as the solo writer) and she provides the lead vocals to each and every song. As well, Loeb frequently does her own backing vocals, which is pretty impressive. She plays acoustic guitar on all of the songs and the electric guitar on "Waiting For Wednesday," the track I think this album could have passed on. As well, she co-produced all but three of the songs on this album. In other words, this album reflects - for the most part - the musical sensibilities of singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb.

Given that only one song on the album features Loeb on her electric guitar, this might well be viewed as the best of Lisa Loeb's acoustic works. The surprising aspect of many of her albums to those whose familiarity with Loeb is mostly her radio hit "Stay (I Missed You") is that Lisa Loeb has some ability to rock and sound a bit heavier, angrier or vocal than the demure poet the one single paints her as. That surprise is largely lacking from The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb, save on her track "Single Me Out." Most of the songs on this album are the more musing songs which focus on asking questions ("How," "Do You Sleep?," "What Am I Supposed To Say?"), telling musical stories ("Furious Rose," "Waiting For Wednesday") or expressing fairly universal sentiments ("Stay (I Missed You)," "Falling In Love," "Wishing Heart").

For those not familiar with the works of Lisa Loeb, she is a singer-songwriter whose general style is the lone woman with guitar who performs from the nebulous border between pop-rock and folk-rock music. She is an adept music writer, vocal performer and lyricist.

Perhaps best known for her #1 hit, "Stay (I Missed You)," Lisa Loeb started from a place where what separated her from most of the marketplace was her powerful ability to write compelling lyrics. Lisa Loeb burst out of the gate as an articulate young woman with lines like ". . . I turned the radio on, I turned the radio up, / And this woman was singing my song: / The lover's in love, and the other's run away, / The lover is crying 'cause the other won't stay. / Some of us hover when we weep for the other who was / Dying since the day they were born. / Well, this is not that: / I think that I'm throwing, but I'm thrown. / And I thought I'd live forever, but now I'm not so sure" ("Stay (I Missed You)"). I used to work with a guy who loathed popular music and when the Fugees hit it big with "Killing Me Softly," a song he had been listening to for about three months before it became a mainstream success, all he said was "Sometimes the masses get it right." With Lisa Loeb, "Stay (I Missed You)" might provided an even more potent example. There are so few pop-rock songs written with such a smart ability to express what the artist is trying to say as that.

The thing is, Loeb is not a one-hit wonder, at least not on the lyrical aspects. At least as good as her mainstream smash is the song "Bring Me Up," where she sings, "We've shared humility and orange roses. / And poking fun at all our friends / They had their barbecues, we have our arguments. / We never can agree. / You said, "when you don't talk you take it out on me." / I was quiet, I was tired. . . . I wanted you to make it stop . . . And you were wrong and I was right. and I wanted you to bring me up. / Hmmm you know me well, this is something that I shouldn't have to tell you." Loeb has a pretty incredible ability to both tell musical story-songs and to express emotions that fall along the lines of universal relationship feelings. Her ability to explore dysfunctional relationships in songs gives her a wonderful perspective and one that makes her very accessible, even if her diction is above the heads of the 12 - 15 year-old c.d. buying market.

And while she uses repetition effectively in songs like "Bring Me Up" and "Do You Sleep?," she is less effective with it on tracks like "Truthfully." This song holds up incredibly poorly - especially over multiple replays - with its refrain of "truthfully, I - / I'm finding finally. / truthfully, you - / you helped me find at last. / truthfully, we - / are finding out what's true. / and truthfully I am finding out what's you" ("Truthfully"). Combined with the singsong nature of the vocal performance, the simplicity of the lyrics rather quickly becomes annoying and tiresome. Fortunately, this is the exception to the rule on The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb, an album that more frequently surprises with its clever rhyme schemes and verbal expressiveness.

Lisa Loeb's vocals tend to fall into an alto and soprano range and the songs on The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb, there is a fair exploration of her range. She goes higher for songs like "Do You Sleep?" a song impressive also for the speed that she manages to get the lines out in. She goes a bit lower for songs like "Taffy" and this helps her to emote a bit more anger, which fits the song perfectly (it's an angry song by the lyrics, if not by the instrumentals).

Similarly, The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb has tracks that are generally more along the pop-rock sensibilities of Lisa Loeb, omitting the songs that are the most folksy from this compilation. Strangely, the opposite is true as well; The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb is lacking in a number of the tracks where Loeb plays the electric guitar and plays heavy, dramatic chords. The result is a (mostly) light pop-rock album that sounds like a Lilith Fair radio station.

While it might seem like The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb would have very limited appeal, the strength of Loeb's lyrics make her works easily accessible and enjoyable to anyone who loves great singer-songwriters. Anyone who liked the poetics of anything they might have heard by Loeb on the radio will likely feel like it is concentrated on this album and this work does have a high number of truly wonderful tracks by the singer-songwriter.

The best track is "Stay (I Missed You)," the low point is probably the repetitive and less memorable "All Day."

For other, former Artist Of The Month, reviews, be sure to check out:
Beginnings - Shania Twain
Break Every Rule - Tina Turner
Femme Fatale - Britney Spears

8/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the albums and singles I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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More Than A One-Hit Wonder, Lisa Loeb Is A Firecracker! (My Next Artist Of The Month!)

The Good: Decent voice, Good lyrics, Surprisingly diverse instrumentals
The Bad: Some amazingly terrible lines/rhymes
The Basics: Surprisingly strong, Firecracker reminds listeners that we ought not to judge our wonders by their one supposed hit!


There are few musical artists who hit it big with their first single and find that they still have the ability to record albums afterward for over a decade. Given the amazing success of "Stay (I Missed You)" on her debut, Tails, one suspects that most people wrote Lisa Loeb off as an artist who would be a flash-in-the-pan, one-hit wonder. Two years after that big hit, Loeb released Firecracker, an album that gave her a remarkable amount of creative control over her own work.

With an eclectic mix of folk-rock and pop-rock songs, Firecracker is a surprising album, even today. Perhaps what makes it so surprising - discovering it now - is that it did not cement Lisa Loeb's popularity in pop-rock music. Instead, the album performed poorly on the charts, but did well enough that sales from the album kept Loeb's musical career alive. The relative greatness of the songs on Firecracker seem to be enshrined by Loeb herself as some of the best, as seven of the twelve tracks are on her compilation album The Very Best Of Lisa Loeb, more tracks than from any of her other albums.

With twelve tracks, clocking in at 42:12, Firecracker is definitely the musical vision of singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb. In addition to writing (or on "Let's Forget About It," co-writing) all of the songs on the album, Loeb provides lead vocals on each track and provides most of the harmony vocals for herself. She plays acoustic guitar on all of the songs, save "Split Second," where she mixes it up with a truly vibrant electric guitar. She also takes a co-producer credit on Firecracker, so she is intimately involved in all aspects of the production of this album, it truly is her musical vision.

Lisa Loeb's musical vision is a surprisingly rich one for a woman, her guitar and accompaniment. What I mean is that for a guitar/bass/drums presentation - which is what all but one track on the album is (a piano joins her on "Let's Forget About It") - the songs on this album sound remarkably diverse. Lisa Loeb seems to have a strong and worthwhile foundation in music education and she is not afraid to present an album that showcases the many facets of that education. Moreover, unlike some albums that attempt to present a diverse sound, Firecracker sounds professional and produced, not like Loeb is taking the shotgun approach to making music. Instead of sounding haphazard, the album comes together with a musical richness that is a real credit to the artist. This, like similar ventures by other singer-songwriters, leaves me wondering how this album was not huge when it was released. Sigh. Pop culture was focused on the Spice Girls when Firecracker came out initially.

Great albums start with great writing and Lisa Loeb has strong poetic skills on Firecracker with only a few real strikes against her in the writing department (in fact, it is some of the lyrics that keep her from nudging this album even higher in the ratings). The songs on this album are almost exclusively about relationships and Lisa Loeb creates a series of musings and musical stories that put her brand of pop-rock right on the border with folk-rock. For example, "Furious Rose" is very much a musical story as she sings "'It's not really poetry, but it's pretty,' he said. / As he raises his voice, she lowers her head. / 'It makes my heart heavy. you're lonely, I think. / Oh, Rose, you're sad, I suppose.'" And despite the somewhat obvious rhyme scheme in that opening, this is a track with a remarkably high level of diction with lines like "I've heard energy in adversity. / Your smile: the soul of witchery . . . Bring me wild plums and agrimony . . . your languorous hum, that tone of surprise . . ." ("Furious Rose"). Perhaps Loeb failed to succeed because she was using words not easily accessible to the 12 - 18 c.d. buying crowd. In which case, bravo Lisa!

Not simply throwing around big words that youngsters might have to actually look up, Loeb has a wonderful ability to create a mood and she has something to say. Take the title track of the album, for example. Firecracker is another song about conflict in a relationship on the verge of splitting up entirely. Loeb creates a wonderful sense of mood by painting a very clear picture "You want to suffer and show me you're angry. / Spend time alone, find a stick in the basement. / Drink water and gold dust and live on impatience. / Slaughtered for weakness, electric like static. / Slaughtered, you're weak - there's no need to speak. / You change your shoelaces. / I light firecrackers" (Firecracker). The thing is, Loeb creates such a moody picture and then shapes it is with instrumentals that create an agonizing sense of discomfort. Musically, there is a (literal) discord (or discord) on the track that is unsettling and leaves the listener with no doubt that this conflicted relationship is utterly doomed.

As suggested before, though, Loeb's weakness is also in her lyrics. Those who follow my reviews know I have a serious thing against artists who simply rhyme the same word with itself. Loeb does this on several tracks, like overusing the word "truth" and "truthfully" in the song "Truthfully" or "heart" in "Wishing Heart." The only place where her repetition of a word actually works is on her harder rock track, "Split Second." On that, she creates a hypnotic mood by chanting, then shouting out accompanied by her electric guitar with a growing mantra of "It did not want to be stuck / One second longer than I had to be there, / Stuck inside the door. / I'm always scared I'll slam my fingers in the door / Because the last time that I left / I slammed my fingers in the door" ("Split Second"). Typing it out, it even sounds lame and repetitive, but this becomes one of the reasons to buy Firecracker. "Split Second" rocks and it is so different from anything else on the album that it is almost surprising it did not make it onto her compilation album. It's a decent contrast to the pop of "I Do," the ballad "How" or the folk/almost Country "Falling In Love."

That Loeb can unite an album with such diverse musical stylings is something of an accomplishment and not a small one in my book. Part of the way she does this is with her distinctive vocals. Lisa Loeb has a powerful alto voice that has both decent range - she goes lower on Firecracker and higher on "Falling In Love" - and a wide emotive range. As a result, she is able to sound sugary on "I Do" and whispers menace on "Split Second." She sings with a great, deep longing on "How" and a completely dismissive quality on "Let's Forget About It." That emotive range helps to create an incredible album with a strong ability to replay and continue to find something new on it.

The other reason for this is that instrumentally, Loeb produced the album to sound like more than what it is, which is essentially one woman, a guitar and pretty standard bass and drum accompaniment. Instead, the musical diversity creates a combination of rich and stark songs that keep the ear and mind moving through the album. In other words, there is nothing simple about Firecracker and it comes together through the creativity of the sound of the various songs.

Anyone who likes female singer songwriters will find something to love on Firecracker. Loeb is gifted with serious abilities and if this album is any indication, when her writing skills are honed to concentrate on the storytelling and emotive centers of her songs (instead of the obvious rhymes), she's going to take her place as one of the reigning singer-songwriters of the current generation.

The best track is probably the direct poetry of "Falling In Love," I'm pulling "This" as the weak link because as I look over the tracklist again after twelve listens to this album, I cannot remember how that song sounds.

For other, former, Artist Of The Month selections, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Jackie’s Strength (single) – Tori Amos
Any Day Now - Joan Baez
Hits And Rarities - Sheryl Crow

8/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the albums and singles I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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