Class is Class, Whenever
If you want to know what I think of Chris Smither and his
work, please check out these postings: first two albums I’m A Stranger Too and Don’t
It Drag On here; playing live in Exeter in March, 2012 here; album Time Stands Still here, and album Hundred Dollar Valentine here.
I am a fan and therefore I have a fan’s considerable
interest in and pleasure of listening to Smither’s latest release, a career
retrospective recorded in New Orleans. The various musical additions – always light-touch
– and the vocal support/harmony from for example his sister Catherine Norr
provide new as well as remembered depths. It is all brilliant, as his
songwriting and playing is always brilliant. The contemporary versions of his
earliest songs from those first two albums provide the most interest for me,
especially as his deep tenor today delivers quite different nuances in these
songs to the much lighter and distinct warble of his youth, and this is most
noticeable and moving [in that recognition of change and constancy that does
co-exist in a musicians re-visitings] in his version on Disc One of his very
first song Devil Got Your Man. Fiddle is provided by his daughter Robin.
The dominant genre is the blues, on both discs, and Chris’
guitar playing, foot-tapping and that distinctive vocal – at times pushed to
quite lively inflections – are collectively outstanding. Jimmy Fitting’s
harmonica accompaniments add even more subtle class to two discs of absolute
Smither’s re-workings of class.
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