Known mostly for her vocal contributions to her hubby Chuck Prophet’s albums and also for her whispered contributions to Red House Painters’ wonderful ‘Songs for a Blue Guitar’ LP, STEPHANIE FINCH has long been respected as a team player.
Thus, it’s hard to credit her finally coming into the spotlight with her long-awaited solo debut ‘Cry Tomorrow’, but when you’ve played it a couple of times, you can only wonder why it took her so long. She’s a natural and this album is an absolute corker.
She’s in good hands, of course. The Company Men are seasoned pros Chuck Prophet, Kelley Stoltz and Rusty Miller. They mix and match on guitars, bass, drums and keyboards and their empathy is a joy to behold. They provide a tight, compact and thoroughly rockin’ backdrop for Ms. Finch’s sassy and intelligent songs and the ten of them simply breeze by, clocking in at a just-right 33 minutes in total.
Because of Prophet’s Roots-Rock credentials, you might imagine ‘Cry Tomorrow’ would have more of a Cosmic Americana slant, but that’s not the case at all. Several of the best (and most immediate) tunes like the snappy opener ‘Tina Goodbye’, ‘Wandering Son’ and the way cool ‘Don’t Back Out Now’ rattle and roll like ‘Loaded’-era Velvets or early Modern Lovers and their timeless No-Wave quality soon worms its’ way into your heart.
Stephanie also proves to have immaculate taste in covers. Her take of the Chuck Prophet/ Alejandro Escovedo co-write ‘Sensitive Boys’ has a delightful ‘Sunday Morning’-meets-Brill Building sashay to it, while she digs out a previously unreleased Randy Newman tune in ‘She’s The One’ and proceeds to build her version around a determined harpsichord riff. It shouldn’t work in theory, but the end result is a real pleasure to behold.
|
If all that wasn’t enough, there are still a couple of exquisite ballads to wallow in. ‘Count The Days 1-2-3-4-5-6-7’ is an angry, but dignified song of betrayal (“I gave you my heart, you gave me hers/ I gave you sugar, you gave me dirt”) while ‘So Do I’ is a heart-melting slice of blue soul which shows off Finch’s cool and charismatic voice to perfection.
‘Cry Tomorrow’, then, is a bright, breezy and ballsy. It’s probably the product of a whole lotta hard work, but between them Stephanie Finch and The Company Men make it all sound easier than ABC. This album is highly recommended for Rock and Americana heads alike.
Stephanie Finch on Myspace
|
