Release Date: 16 March, 2004
Audio CD
Tracks
- Jewel of Abilene
- Sweet Savior's Arms
- Sharecroppin' Man
- Walking in a Line
- Maple Tree
- Tell Me True
- Turtle Dove
- Black Haired Boy
- Katy Allen
- This White Circle on My Finger
- Sawyer
- Pretty Little Dreamer
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Rating 4.5
Whatta Voice ... You wouldn't know it if you didn't read her bio or visit her web site, but Grey's done a whole lot of voice overs for cartoons. Real bigtime Hollywood type characters you'd recognize in a heartbeat. But that's nothing compared to her considerable talents as a singer and interpreter of American songs. She's got a true musical instrument that reaches you by telling a story through song. She's just wonderful. Glorious ForgeryThe Graceful Ghost is the most gorgeous album from the 1800s you'll hear this year. DeLisle comes on like the ghost of Mother Maybelle or Kitty Wells (although sexier and more polished than either), and her songwriting shows ample hours studying at the feet of Dolly Parton (insert jokes about "the shade" here). A little research shows that DeLisle is an ultra-slick Hollywood voiceover queen and has released two homegrown retro-country albums prior to taking the big leap into spooky folk aimed straight for the O Brother! market. Yeah, I'm a bit jaded, but this album is clearly a fake and not afraid to admit it. (I love how the added ambient crackles and hiss on some songs fade out before the music does!) And yet, it's stunningly beautiful and DeLisle's talent as a singer and a songwriter cannot be denied. But she seems very market savvy/driven and going after a niche, I think; too often from head and not from the heart as it were. Still, it's far, far, far superior to the icky yuppie "country" slopped out on Norah Jones version 2.0. I wouldn't recommend The Graceful Ghost to anyone in place of authentic rural American field recordings, however I do think it stands a good chance to make my list for the best of '04 -- 2004 and not 1804, that is.the nineteenth century, yes, but not our nineteenth centuryGrey De Lisle has beauty -- physical and esthetic -- and an exotic, mysterious name and sound. She is also a brilliant mimic. Reread the previous sentence, and see where the emphasis falls. Was it on "brilliant" or "mimic"? If it was the latter, you'll hear the best imitation that will ever be of Dolly Parton at her most traditional-sounding. If your eye fell on "brilliant," you will probably, on hearing the appropriately titled Graceful Ghost (which you can read on two levels; see "brilliant" and "mimic" above), hear something that amounts to a smart, subtle, deeply understood approximation of the old mountain songs and urban parlor ballads that inspired, and comprised the repertoire of, the Carter Family. Even the titles (though in prosaic fact denoting De Lisle originals) -- "The Maple Tree," "Tell Me True," "Turtle Dove," "Black Haired Boy" -- sound like the titles of Carter Family songs from a parallel universe. Actually, "Katy Allen" brings to the astonished senses the notion of an extraordinarily improbable collaboration between the Carter Family and Donovan. All of the songs here are very good for what they are, if you can accept what they are, but long after you've turned off the stereo -- no matter who you are, whatever you think of what's going on here -- it is unlikely that "Katy Allen" will let you be. |
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