I'd like to ask for a temporary reprieve from orchestral pop. The jazzy vocals, smooth horn arrangements, and bursts of cheery strings were a welcome respite from crunchy guitar, back when the downtown hipsters developed ironic attachments to Burt Bacharach and learned to mix martinis. The lounge craze of the mid-90s was all about kitsch and secondhand space-age dinnerware. Maybe you liked the music, maybe you actually owned a CD, but the only place you ever listened to it was while vintage shopping or appropriating the mannerisms of middle-aged swingers circa 1965 at your lowbrow cocktail hour.
Orchestral pop was resuscitated right about the time Burt Bacharach records were rescued from thrift-store record rack graves and their creator lauded as a genius and inspiration to people who, two years before, would have scoffed at the mention of his name. Jazzed-up orchestral pop became the form of choice for one-time rock-and-rollers, save for the ever-popular acoustic, confessional folk.
Which brings us to Sarah Shannon. Her old band, Velocity Girl, once post-grunge Sub Pop's biggest seller, got a considerable amount of attention in the early/mid-90s before breaking up and disappearing from the radar entirely sometime in 1996. Being the only girl in an otherwise male band is never easy. Some regarded the Shannon as little more than a pretty face, a charismatic frontwoman to deck the cover of Alternative Press and represent the ideal woman for smitten indie-rock boys. By 1997, when Velocity Girl's once ubiquitous Simpatico! had become $1.99 bin fodder, Sarah Shannon found a terrific opportunity to reinvent herself, first through the short-lived Starry Eyes, and then as a solo artist, releasing one EP on her own Marzipan Records.
Shannon's self-titled release is produced and co-written by Blake Wescott of Pedro the Lion, but don't let that fool you-- there's little evidence of mopey folk or Christian theology on this album. There are, however, a lot of horns and tons of backing vocals. This is not a casual nod toward Bacharach, but a full-on embrace. And I guess there's nothing wrong with that.
But the lush arrangements, coupled with Shannon's pretty, pitch-perfect vocals and polite lyrics are a little too well-behaved for my taste. The balmy "I'll Run Away," is true easy listening, without moments of sonic deconstruction or ironic distance. Sure, the piano is lovely, and the flugelhorn solos will certainly evoke the pastel-tinted, bubble machine theatrics of all your favorite soft-rock radio acts, but folks, last time I heard sounds this smooth I was on hold.
The bluesy "That's Mine" grants the listener a temporary reprieve, as one of the only songs on the album with at least a tenuous relationship to rock n' roll. It gives Shannon a chance to cut loose, ditch her Starlite Lounge persona and summon a bit of emotion. Sadly, she still falls short, but at least it's a good effort.
The album's true high point comes with "Live Life Alone," which sounds like a little-known Gershwin standard. It's a beautiful song, and the arrangement is so dead-on I was temporarily lulled into a kind of romantic trance. Shannon's vocals actually recall Ella Fitzgerald. She hits the high notes like a champ, and I'm inclined to advise her to find a great jazz band, or take up musical theater (she has that kind of voice). Which creates a problem-- "Live Life Alone" could ground a whole album of similarly toned material, or even standards. There's nothing wrong with being eclectic, but Shannon quickly pulls the listener out of the reverie and into a couple more prototypical chamber-pop songs. The jangly "Are You Far Enough" could be a Velocity Girl song (though with less punch); the early 70s swing of "Can't You See" (the album's final track) is tepid, at best.
So here's the risk. You release an album with one really outstanding song, ideally suited to your talents as a vocalist. Your audience may be so blown away by your performance of that one track that they revise their prior opinions of your artistic strengths. You have a diva moment. It's cool, but the rest of your material sounds like you phoned in your vocals, schlepped out some lyrics, and hoped the liberal use of flugelhorn would conceal your ambivalence to the rest of the material.
I feel sorta bad for Sarah Shannon. On this album, she reveals what she should have been doing all along. And it's not this earnest Debby Boone shit-- I'm thinking Shannon could do a mean take on the Cole Porter songbook. Until then, I'll wait patiently for the Bacharach regurgitations to end.
