Karyn Oliver
- Hurricane
4 out of 5 stars
Maverick, August 2007
www.karynoliver.com
Impressive genre defying debut from Baltimore
singer
-songwriter. From the sensual saxophone intro
to the
first track "America's" it's clear that this
record is something special. The lyrics to this
opener echo the pain of seeing the world
's richest
nation failing to live up to the standards expected
by its citizens and the backing wails in sympathy
carried along by Karyn
's plaintive 'Oh, America,
Where are you now?
'
The mood lightens with the countri
fied "Flutterby's"
warning against the
flutterby by dangers of
fi
rst love. As with all the tracks the backing for
this is superb with some great guitaring from husband,
Matt Lehr. The next track,
"Nothing To
Remember
" is the killer track of the whole CD.
This is a lovely, sad love ballad, recalling Mary
-
Chapin Carpenter at her best, over a Tex
-Mex feel
underpinned by David Zee
's melodica. A straight
up rocker next with
"No Rest."
There is a tendency on a debut album to try to
showcase all the aspects of your talent and given
that this is your big chance is understandable and
no bad thing. Unfortunately, it can tend to lead to
a slightly uneven feel to the album as a whole
which is why this feed
-back fuelled rock'n'roll, although
excellently done, feels like it belongs on a
di
fferent CD.
This feeling is ampli
fied by the following track
the excellent
"Morning" sung totally unaccompanied.
It
's clear from this track and others
throughout the CD that Karyn Oliver has a terri
fic,
soulful voice that is shown to great e
ffect in
the title track
"Hurricane" which follows. The
album really hits a groove with the upbeat
"I'm
Still Here
", again with some great guitar.
I
'm assuming that the next track, "St Mary's", is
autobiographical detailing the awfulness of being
taught by nuns and how the experience still
haunts her. This seems like a good point to point
out the sheer quality of the song writing. All the
songs are written by Karyn Oliver and move from
ballads to rockers without any drop in quality.
The lyrics are intelligent and often poignant. As
stated above it is clear this debut is designed to
show the breadth of Karyn
's songwriting talents as
well as her vocal skills. We therefore next get the
cool funk of
"The Rain" followed by the
alt.country sound of
"Baynesville" and "Missing"
(
Come Back to Me). Last up we have an emotional
unaccompanied
"Cold Water's Fire." This is an exceptional
debut by a very talented singer and
songwriter backed by a truly sympathetic group of
musicians.
My only quibble would be that it tries a bit too
hard to be a showcase for all the aspects of Oliver
's
abilities but with this amount of talent on
show it
's a small point. I think that once Karyn
decides the direction of her music then she has
the capacity to follow this through to enormous
success.
pg 88 maverick