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Reviews: Julia Fordham: Concrete Love

Reviews: 1

Review by Metralla July 20, 2003 (1 of 1 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:
I found this at Best Buy yesterday for $14.99. I'm totally unfamiliar with this singer/songwriter, but one has to take chances - as I did with Colin Linden, and that turned out to be an excellent SACD.

And I am quite pleased with "Concrete Love". Songs are mostly personal observations about love and relationships, moody and introspective, with some jazzy and more upbeat numbers - like "Butterfly". "Wake up with You" is a bit weak, but it's followed by "Concrete Love" with india.arie and this is a very strong song, and the last song listed on the SACD (track 11) "Alleluia", featuring Joe Henry, is outstanding.

Julia has an expressive voice, normally residing in a surprisingly low register, all smokey, deep and honeyed; but boy, she's got an enormous range.

There are two songs on the SACD that are not listed in the liner notes, nor on the CD at AllMusic.com - "Funny" (quite a good song) and "Silver" (not so hot). Then there is a minute of silence before a little easter egg - "Loving You", made famous by Minnie Ripperton. Yep, Julia can hit those high notes. Not quite the five octaves Minnie had, but pretty impressive.

The record is produced by Larry Klein, and he has done a good job keeping it pretty simple, but nicely layered and well structured, with a characteristically strong bass line (Larry's on bass, of course). The great Billy Preston plays the Hammond B-3, Wurlitzer and electric piano, Mark Goldenberg and Dean Parks do the guitars, and Julia plays acoustic guitar. The sonics are delightful and the SACD sounds rich and deep, but at the same time, somewhat sparse and open, treating us to Julia's beautiful voice with narry a trace of sibilance.

This SACD is on Vanguard. There is no specific mention in the liner notes of who did the SACD mastering; mastering credits go to Eddy Schreyer at Oasis Mastering, CA. I think it's a stereo only SACD, because I can find no mention of multichannel.

I am pleased to see the variety of SACDs that are starting to appear now.

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