Suzanne Vega
Solitude Standing

THE REVIEW

The courage of the shy is proverbial, so unpredictable that it often borders on recklessness.
In the glittering '80s, overrun by divas and starlets, chart-topping automatons fed by record companies like fierce battery chickens, to present oneself in a subdued tone, singing melancholic stories with the help of a guitar and little else, might have seemed pure self-harm to many. Moreover, from a girl named Suzanne Vega, raised in the Puerto Rican ghettos of New York, something like rap or angry rock was logically expected, anyway "tough" and fiery music. But just a glance at the cover is enough to realize that the word "fiery" is foreign to Suzanne's world.
Her face seems the portrait of anemia, even though this apparent weakness hides a tenacious determination, with which she managed to impose her bare sound on the market, as an out-of-time folksinger. Musically, you can hear a lot of the influence of early Joni Mitchell, the acoustic one, while in the lyrics, rather than the confidential and exquisitely feminine style of handling human affairs typical of Aunt Joni (to whom, it is worth saying, all female songwriters owe something), a rather descriptive view of everyday aspects of life prevails, with an abundance of gray and dull tones, to the point that some critics have brought out the ugly word "minimalism," borrowed from politics.

But buried under this apparent calm is poetry, because there can be poetry even in the most banal facts and places. For example, in the words and glances exchanged in a café during any breakfast (Tom's Diner), in the mysterious noises coming from the above floor, where a child lives (Luka), and even in household objects that come alive at night, reflecting people's lives (Night Vision). Loneliness is a kind of specter, a black silhouette lurking at the window, ready to turn if someone enters (Solitude Standing).
To express her strange "visionary realism," Suzanne Vega relies on a thread of a voice, fragile and so devoid of outbursts that it often borders on monotony, and above all, she relies on that typical economy of musical instrumentation that has always characterized every respectable folksinger, starting from the greatest of all, the first Bob Dylan. The ornaments are reduced to a minimum: there are some keyboard chimes at the beginning of Luka, which is also one of the few ballads supported by an appreciable rhythmic base, along with Solitude Standing, In The Eye, and Wooden Horse. Otherwise, as is logical, acoustic guitars dominate, sometimes with very pleasing results, as in Ironbound/Fancy Poultry, with its beautiful faded and hypnotic ending, and in the bright arpeggios of Language, a delightful dissertation on the uselessness of words, though based on beautiful words, which seems to contradict what the song wants to assert.
An economy of means is fine, but in Tom's Diner it's overdone: Suzanne's slender voice, which is certainly not Aretha Franklin's, exposes itself in all its nudity, without even the comfort of a guitar. A way to give more emphasis to the text or a provocation? Who knows, anyway, the result is far from pleasant, and the guy who a few years later put a rhythmic base over it was right. Says someone who usually considers "remixes" useless and stupid, but in this case, the original Tom's Diner, so bare, was a real invitation to remix, and moreover, whoever did this operation (besides making dollars with little effort) in one fell swoop renewed the success of the song and gifted a poem to the club crowd, who are not used to enjoying such subtleties.

Nevertheless, beyond this evident blemish and some other ballads dragged on a bit too long, "Solitude Standing" remains an excellent album, an oasis of quiet in the midst of an already rather noisy decade.