Thanks to buhdge fave Mitch Linker for passing on this positively glowing collection of songs from New Yorker Charlotte Kendrick. A perfect soundtrack for an intimate Sunday brunch, and a lovely record to celebrate a night lit by stars, I Get Stupid is a superior achievement.

Kendrick's understated voice, unfettered by slick shadings, is in the tradition of folk singers to whom the song matters most, real and true and harmonious as it marries Kendrick's heartfelt lyrics to sweetly realized melodies. The audio verite recording, chiefly engineered by producer and arranger Dan Rowe, gives each instrument space to breathe, emphasizing specific tones so that wherever a person listens, the sound surrounds them as if Kendrick and her musicians are in the same, small room with them.

This is no more evident than on "Marlboro Reds," a sweetly-sad story of a person who takes the easy way out when faced with meeting head-on the complexities of life. "Another day of work/Another night with no sleep/Another promise to myself I can't keep/Tomorrow I'll try harder and do what needs to be done," Kendrick sings, before the narrator decides instead to settle for a drag on a Marlboro Red cigarette. The ghostly piano, played with a light touch by Rowe, stands front and center in the mix, punctuated by Marina Warsaw-Fan's chilling cello. The effect, when combined with Kendrick's emotive delivery, is stirring; the pretty melody, carrying the weight of the singer's uncertainty, is most effective.

The album's centerpiece is one of the most affecting love songs I've heard in a long, long time. "With Kisses," a wistful distillation of romantic notions fully realized, is lyrically superlative and endlessly considered and clever. To wit: "It was a long time coming/Like the spring we have yet to see/But they had something that they could not ignore/A lingering melody." What a divine thought!

Singing about the female half of this couple's ability to salve her man's wounds, Kendrick expresses how deep the woman's commitment lies: "When there's nothing left to laugh about/She finds a way to make it better/In a bowl of Cheerios/In a pile of his folded clothes/In the scars she's left exposed with kisses," Kendrick writes, emphasizing the mundane details of a life that is about every little thing. These people are simply fulfilling their destiny by being with each other, and their bond transcends all else. Tasteful electric guitar melds with Kendrick's acoustic to stately effect; the melody is nothing less than radiant.

Kendrick and her musicians make all of this look easy, from the deliciously confessional title song to the push-him-away-even-though... character study of "Too Good For Me," which is the trick to turn for musical magicians. How does Kendrick do it? How do they do it? They invest themselves wholly and they commit themselves fully, and they do it as if they were born to do it, and they probably were, which is as it should be in a world populated with singer-songwriters of the high caliber of Charlotte Kendrick, a truly special find.

Alan Haber
June 11, 2006

Go to: Charlotte Kendrick

hot buhdge | pop buhdge | remember buhdge | audio buhdge | workshop buhdge
television buhdge | film buhdge | books buhdge | video buhdge | pure pop buhdge
contact

(c) 2005, 2006 buhdge et Alan Haber