Eva Cassidy
Songbird

THE REVIEW

I was passing by a record store near my house, back when they still existed, in search of wise advice. It was one of those stores you don't see anymore, inhabited by strange creatures, more like passionate enthusiasts of various music than sales clerks. I am told that in other worlds, such as jazz and classical, these rare creatures full of passion still linger in dusty dens. In the world I will superficially call "rock," this species has been replaced by natural selection with a less specialized, less kind, and completely indifferent type to the material it sells, whether it is music or sausages.

I was used to chatting with the salespeople and asking them "what do you recommend today?" much like you ask a good bartender "make me a cocktail of your choice." Another way to say: "surprise me!" These were places where you would enter like a castaway, in search of any refuge from the daily storms, and often you would find it too. If there's one thing I miss about the new musical world, divided between online and the shopping mall, it’s this physical and affectionate perception of exchange. Nostalgic? Just a little, just sometimes. Today, yes.

"Songbird" by Eva Cassidy is tied to the last years of that little shop: it was one of the last recommendations I received from the elderly clerk and his young colleague who took turns going to London to find juicy novelties to present to customers. They introduced me to this album with a big smile. Inside, a series of more or less known tracks, from Sting's "Fields of Gold" to the famous "Over the Rainbow," passing through songs by Pete Seeger and Curtis Mayfield and American "traditional" pieces like "Wayfaring Stranger." All performers that meant (and still mean) little to me... The cover was terrible, it looked like one of those rejects you find at the bottom of highway café baskets, and the idea of a cover album has never excited me much. In short, I was a bit skeptical. But when I heard Eva's voice, from the first track, all doubts vanished.

I, who love ungraceful voices, inspired hoarseness, alcoholic wheezes, and haunted circuses, found myself at the mercy of an angel.

American from Washington, Eva Cassidy died of melanoma without ever achieving success in 1996 at the age of only 33. The music market noticed her almost by chance in 2001 thanks to a word-of-mouth among listeners, bringing her too late to the top of the charts (number 1 in the USA and the UK) with this collection of tracks taken from her old works.

With an imaginary split between soul and blues, a flexible and crystal-clear voice capable of moving freely from jazz to pop to rhythm & blues, Eva Cassidy in "Songbird" is accompanied by fairly ordinary musicians, with a clear but not very personal sound. Essentially, she does it all. But it doesn't matter; there is something unique in that voice. A personality capable of making even well-known melodies her own. A clear timbre, spring water with a distant blemish... a vague aftertaste of bitter earth, but just a distant shadow, like an old childhood trauma. Nothing to do with Janis Joplin's desperate illness or Sade's soft sensuality, perhaps a bit more like Joni Mitchell's "Blue." But here there are no virtuosos, no excesses, nothing at all. Yet the poor American singer took me with her, far from everyone, and while she sings the traditional gospel "Wade in the Water," she makes me feel as if carried away by the current of a great river. It feels good and bad, simultaneously.

I imagine myself with her, at fifteen, like new Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in skirts, in a clear countryside never corrupted by the woes of life, with a future ahead where, as Guccini said, “it's all still to be done and still everything, or almost everything, to be wrong.”