I Heard a Woman Singing_音乐专辑
I Heard a Woman Singing
表演者: Frankie Armstrong
介质: Audio CD
发行时间: 1998-03-10
唱片数: 1
出版者: Flying Fish/Idn
条形码: 0018964033224
专辑简介
“Frankie . . . when I think of you across the sea, you who I only meet at festivals and rallies where big hearts come together for peace, I think of a woman of grace and spunk, of rage and tenderness, of desperate purpose and hungered-for humor. And I listen — listen to what you refuse to suppress, what you are moved to sing. Of course, this is just from one singer with nerves of steel to another.” –Holly Near Frankie Armstrong has been one of the leading voices on the English folk scene for four decades. She is well known for her powerful a cappella singing of traditional ballads, as well as for her interpretations of modern songs that explore and express personal and social relationships, especially those that focus on the experiences of women. I Heard a Woman Singing was first released as a Flying Fish LP in 1984, and in 1998 it is making its first appearance on CD.
Via Rounders Records Album Profile
Problem number one is musical: Frankie Armstrong is a British folk singer blessed with a strong, clear, supple voice, and she's well aware of the quality of her instrument. Unfortunately, she seems to have but one trick in her interpretive bag, and that trick is overkill. Every song is delivered at a volume somewhere between mezzoforte and fortissimo, and at an emotional pitch somewhere between seething frustration and barely contained rage. "Nothing Between Us Now" is a harangue aimed petulantly at a faithless lover; James Taylor's "Millworker" is a protest song hammered out with all the subtlety of a picket chant; even the potentially gorgeous "Tam Lin" is beaten soundly about the head and shoulders by that strong, clear, supple voice. You find yourself straining to hear the songs through the singer. Problem number two is gender-political: though this is supposed to be an album dealing with women's issues, that expectation is only borne out if you believe that women's issues begin and end with the shallowness, inconstancy and treachery of men. This record doesn't really seem to be about women at all -- it's about the men who leave them, the men who exploit and abuse them, the men who make them have babies, and the men who are so inconsiderate as to drink themselves to death and leave their wives with the babies they made them have. Men do all of those things, of course, and there's nothing the matter with saying so. But one might be forgiven for wondering if there isn't more than one side to the stories told in these songs, or whether all of the shallowness, inconstancy and treachery is really so uniformly distributed to one side of the sexual faultline. Ultimately, that nagging question ends up distracting as much from the music on this album as Frankie Armstrong's bludgeoning delivery does.
Via Allmusicguide.com
曲目
1. Cattle Call
2. Mr. Fox
3. Come, Geordie, Hold The Bairn
4. My Daughter, My Son
5. Nothing Between Us Now
6. New Boots
7. Millworker
8. The Dark Wood
9. Lady Margaret / Tam Lin
10. Taken By Surprise
11. The Ballad Of Erica Levine
12. I Don't Want Your Red, Red Roses
