Bloom, Red & the Ordinary Girl | Yep Roc
By TED DROZDOWSKI | April 17, 2006
For Tres Chicas — Whiskeytown’s Caitlin Cary, Hazeldine’s Tonya Lamm, and Glory Fountain/Let’s Active’s Lynn Blakey — it’s all about the harmonies. Here, as on their 2004 debut Sweetwater (Yep Roc), their twined voices softly curl around lyrics about love and loss, so gently soft-selling regret and sadness that the results are lulling and cheerful. It’s soma for the tired soul. With splashes of steel guitar and singing six-strings in the fold, to say nothing of the resonance that their rich voices trigger, the loose architecture of this album is country. Yet the organ and imagery of numbers like “Drop Me Down” echo both soul and gospel, and when “Stone Love Song” starts gently swinging it recalls both classic vocal jazz and the Owen Bradley–produced ballads of Patsy Cline. There’s even a touch of the Celtic in the anti-love song “Red,” with its clipped vocal phrasing, and a sense of humor in its honest lyric turns like “I don’t wish you well/And I’ll see you in Hell” and “I’m as red as the petals/Of a dead stinking rose.” If only emotional tragedy were always this sunny.
On the Web
Tres Chicas: http://www.treschicas.org/
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Topics:
CD Reviews
, Patsy Cline
