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Rating: Edie Brickell is not a shooting star.
Texan, born in '66, she became famous in 1988 thanks to an intimate PopFolk album: “Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars,” which included songs like “What I Am” and “Circle”, followed by the much underrated “Ghost of a Dog” in '90.
These two albums were released under the name “Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians,” thus also remembering the band that accompanied her in those years; this association disappeared for quite some time, due to the events I will soon recount, to return only in 2006 with the album “Stranger Things,” leaving Edie to a rather peculiar solo career.
In the early '90s, fate arranged the meeting between the frog Edie and the Prince of American Folk, Paul Simon: the result was a Marriage (I think still ongoing), three children, two solo albums (nine years apart... Ah, the family!), and thousands of broken hearts, including mine...
If you allow me at this point, speaking of broken hearts, I want to make a small personal digression: exploring my memories and seeking the reasons for various changes in tastes and/or opinions that occurred in my life, the facts present me with evidence: “Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars” was the first album not of purely Rock origin to enter my life, as well as the first by a Female Singer-Songwriter (I was 14 years old), and considering the year (at that time the most frequently listened to album was “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” by Maiden, to understand) I can, quite calmly, attribute it the role of a watershed between the genres that still most meet my tastes today, in short, Edie was for me what Aristotle was first for Hellenism and later for Christianity (and sorry for the immodesty of the comparison).
Returning to the topic of the review, I have already mentioned the two solo albums released after the marriage to Simon: the first, “Picture Perfect Morning” from '94, the second “Volcano” from 2003, both deserving of attention and both not reviewed on DeB, I will talk about the first:
“Picture Perfect Morning” is, of course, produced by Paul Simon, chronologically arriving a good 5 years after Edie's last release, and these two things can be perceived immediately upon first listen: indeed, if Brickell's early works were pervaded by adolescent innocence, here we are presented with an album created by a person who has become an adult, first a wife and then also a mother, with all the merits but also the flaws that this entails.
From a sonic point of view, the domain remains Folk but without, or almost, all the Pop influences of the past, and if some deviation is present, this leads to a mature Acoustic Rock, sober and devoid of frills.
But what is most surprising is the emotional environment: despite the key reading still to be found in the intimate sphere, Edie completely abandons the existential questions she had accustomed fans to focus more on stories of everyday life, without renouncing the dreamlike embellishments in the lyrics, “her trademarks.”
That said, however, one cannot avoid noticing the work's flaws, which are to be found in the attempt to adapt to the canons of classical Folk songwriting, losing part of the freshness present in the two albums under the “New Bohemians” brand, a flaw ultimately adeptly healed by Paul Simon's “craft” both at production and as a session musician, because from a technical point of view, here we are in front of an almost impeccable work, performed and played so professionally as to run the risk of seeming too well packaged: this feeling vanishes if one gives the time for this album to mature inside us, maturing through clear and honest songs like “Tomorrow Comes,” “When the Light Goes Down,” “Olivia,” and “In the Bath.”
To listen to, as the title suggests, early in the morning among a croissant, a cappuccino, and the first rays of sun...
...dawning.
Mo.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
04 Good Times (03:09)
He left home when she was seventeen
We came back to see her
She was older cold and even mean
Not like we remembered
Out along the old road
Where the Indian Paintbrush grows
She began to cry and said she wanted us to know
There were hard times
When the family was broken
There were hard times
Then she lit up a smoke and said
Gonna open up my umbrella and keep it off of me
It's so easy to go somewhere
But so hard to leave
I move far away and still the memories find me there
When I hear the clock and see the dust come off the chair
There were hard times
I don't wanna remember
There were hard times
And I don't want to see ya
Let the wind and white sheet blow through the room
I can live with the ghosts but not with you
It was never so easy saying goodbye
Sitting at a bus stop
Waiting for euphoria
I've heard so much bad news today
I don't think I can take anymore
Of the hard times
Shadows on the horizon
All the hard times
Rusty glow in the sunrise
05 Another Woman's Dream (02:45)
Late at night, when I lie awake in bed
Your eyes finally meet mine
But you belong to someone else
So fantasy is all I find
Alive only in my mind
Oh but to, creep into your room
A little help from the silver moon
To silently fill your dreams
You'd take my hand and follow me to
Another time, a land unseen
Another woman's dream
Come with me, on a wild fantasy
Be one with earth, moon and sky
Then lie with me awhile
As we defy the hands of time!
Come see the haven, I have buried deep inside
Hear my secrets, dreams and fears
Will you recognize my soul, before we grow too old?
Late at night, in the darkness of my mind
These visions haunt my dreams
Of you and I searching silently apart
Is it as crazy as it seems?
I think I know what it means
To break through this hell
And cast a magic spell
To send you back in time
06 Stay Awhile (04:34)
Stay a while
Stay as long as you can
Alright
I don't mind if I do
Pull up a lawn chair
Take your dreams outside
Alright
I don't mind if I do
Lay low and motor
Motor along
Rest a while
Rest as long
As you need
Alright
Loosen your laces
Let your soles be free
Alright
I don't mind if I do
Oooh
08 Olivia (03:43)
Lights on the river bridge roll to the water's edge
Filling the harbor with halos
The night was cold and black when they were walking back
He held her hand in the shadows
My favorite
There is so much more to see
Why stay behind
When you could go on with me?
Icicle centuries burst into gentle breeze
Somewhere a curse has been lifted
She turned around in her chair and he touched her hair
And the universe shifted
My favorite
There is so much more to see
Why stay behind
When you could go on with me?
Olivia
Why don't you let your heart come home?
Olivia
Leave those wild young boys alone
Out on the stormy cliff silvery waters lift
High with a wild wind behind them
Vaporous rippling like a drug or a dream
Eyes in the lamplight were shining
My favorite
There is so much more to see
Why stay behind
When you could go off with me?
Olivia
Won't you let your heart come home?
Olivia
Leave those wild young boys alone
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