Haunting modern/acoustic pop; gorgeous vocals.

12 MP3 Songs
POP: Folky Pop, FOLK: Modern Folk



Details:
The fresh-on-the-heels-of follow up to "13 Songs For Right Now" from 2002. Though that one was well-received, this is somehow the one that is getting all the attention. Really, it's a companion piece to the other one, and the two of them together create something of a seamless beast.... And yet, they are very distinct. "13 Songs" was mostly written in 2002, but there are several songs on it that date from much earlier eras, and some later-era Maggies songs redone with a stripped-down acoustical approach. "Honey", however, was written and recorded all within a 10 week period in the nightmarish winter of 2003-2003. Its startlingly consistent and fresh. God knows how long it will keep.

Sticking with his basic acoustic guitar/stacked vocals/drum machine/piano approach, Philip laid down the tracks before a well-placed mike, mixed them carefully (and sometimes not so carefully, depending on how many Manhattans he had had the night of), and left it at that. Its fantastic, whatever he did. Several years in pretentious art schools in the 1980s somehow gave him the gift of knowing what to leave out, if nothing else. The spareness is alluring, and the writing has never been more concise, focused and bittersweet.

The theme again this time is the tortured byways of love: love requited, unrequited, ignored, denied, confused, betrayed, trampled on, then acknowledged, returned tenfold, multiplied, sanctified, dignified and then again denied. Familial, romantic, gothic, gigantic. "Love Always", the gentle & hauting opener, seems to describe someonee whose loyalties are beyond true and yet somehow is still imprisoned by them. "Criminale" (obviously titled during this country's silly deploring of all things French, or maybe during a bender on Cuvee) seems to be about a love-crime so heinous and attractive the perpetrator can't seem to tear himself away from it and in fact isn't even sure a crime was committed. The chorus is a hook that's impossible to ignore. "Heart" is a rare thing these days, a wide-eyed devotional: "I will do anything/I will be anyone/ gimme the gist /and I'll go down the list for you" written with full awareness of the burden of such devotion: "this won't be the last / of this fucked-up truth..." Truth is indeed fucked up. Thank you.

This is different territory than Price's stuff with The Maggies, which pretty much relied solely on the gift of the hook and a rather pleasingly opaque confessional lyricism. No less confessional, this time there seems to be a fiercely compelling object at the center of it. This around, also, sonically, Price pays his dues to all the 70s soft-pop that poured through his ears as a child; everything from Cat Stevens, Elton John to Bread. Lovely. - Bill Eleven