Category: contemporary classics (Page 3 of 3)

Personal New Orleans melting pot.

Swedish expat Osborne, living in New Orleans, was considered promising for a while by Sony, but got dumped after one CD already. His previous CD proved that label wrong convincingly: it was a desparately sounding record about a lost love, obsessedly played and produced clearly. This one does that too. Overall it sounds optimistic, recorded with a lot of fun in the playing and breathing a swampy and relaxed live feel.

Fourteen songs long Osborne mixes his trusted influences (blues, gospel, second line, country-folk, jazz and pop) at the intersection of those styles. He reverts to them, but after two stereotipic openers he manages them at will with beautiful, natural melodies. Continue reading

On her own feet.

Although Jude Johnstone has been unknown for four CDs already, many know songs she wrote. Trisha Yearwood reached number one with The Women Before Me, Johnny Cash sang her Unchained, Bonnie Raitt made Wounded Heart her own and on Emmylou Harris’ latest there is Hold On.
Her eleven new songs are ballads and medium-tempo songs, played in a jazzy way and produced in an open manner. Johnstone’s vocals and piano are in the centre and, because of that, her flowing, fragile melodies are too. Continue reading

Classic class.

Krista Detor’s third contains twelve songs in a mix of folk, jazz and gospel. Still she is first and foremost a singer-songwriter that only needs a small inducement for melancholical, but layered lyrics. She alternates between traditional folky subjects and a failed romantic visit to Paris or a not prevented suicide.
Producer/guitarist/background singer David Weber takes care of more musical barbed hooks than on predecessor Mudshow. Continue reading