Lizz Wright - The Orchard
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CD Details
Artist: Lizz WrightEdition: Music CD
Audio: French (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-02-26
Music Label: Verve Forecast
Soundtracks:
- Coming Home
- My Heart
- I Idolize You
- Hey Mann
- Another Angel
- When I Fall
- Leave Me Standing Alone
- Speak Your Heart
- This Is
- Song For Mia
- Thank You
- Strange
Music reviews of The Orchard
Music Review: The pickin's could be better in this "Orchard"
Rating: 3 Stars
It may sound like a trite observation, but a great voice alone does not make a great album. To create a great album, you need great material.
Lizz Wright has a voice as dark and refreshing as black coffee, but on "The Orchard" the material is a watery mix of unremarkable pop, gospel,and folk-derived songs.
There are stand-outs among them, to be sure. Ike Turner's steamy "I Idolize You" is done to perfection, and Patsy Cline's "Strange" is given a haunting, understated feeling.
None of the rest of the album does Wright justice. "Song for Mia" sounds like something that could come from the Indigo Girls. "Another Angel" seems to borrow from Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour", and tunes like "My Heart", "Leave Me Standing Alone", and "This Is" veer uncomfortably close to the stylings of a pop diva like "Shakira".
For contrast, and a hint of what Lizz Wright is capable of, try listening to her belt out "Come Rain or Come Shine" on the Toots Thielemans album, "One More For the Road". There Wright outshines the other album guests like Madeline Peyroux and Oleta Adams...and that is saying something!
Wright needs to make a choice: does she want to do crossover pop, and mute her talents, or does she want to truly shine? The possiblities are endless for her--she could be another Anita Baker, Roberta Flack, or sassy Sarah Vaughan. It's all up to her and the road she chooses.
I hope this interlude in "The Orchard" is just a stop-over. She can do much better than this musical dilettantism.
Description of The Orchard
Wright's collaboration with Craig Street continues on The Orchard. While her prior releases boasted contributions from some of the jazz world's most respected jazz players, The Orchard features an eclectic cast that includes noted singer/songwriter Toshi Reagon, who co-wrote several songs with Wright; Calexico members Joey Burns and John Convertino; avant-guitar hero Oren Bloedow; longtime Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell; Ollabelle member Glenn Patscha; and guest vocalists Catherine Russell and Marc Anthony Thompson (aka Chocolate Genius).The Orchard's fluid, intimate performances reflect the unpretentious spirit in which the music was created. The project actually began with a set of photographs taken by Wright in her rural hometown, focusing on the orchard of the title, a setting that she's known since childhood.
That organic approach was maintained throughout the recording process, which took place at studios in upstate New York's Catskill mountains, in Tucson, Arizona and Brooklyn. The sessions emphasized spontaneity and chemistry.
That rare ability to exist within the musical moment is one of the qualities that make Lizz Wright a special artist and The Orchard a career milestone. "This record was a huge learning experience, in every way, and I think it showed me a lot about myself," she states. "I never would have imagined that I would have written some of the things I wrote on this record, or told some of these stories. But I felt really free and I really let myself go, and I surprised myself."
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