Sing It Loud features KD Lang’s first new band since the decline of her Reclines about two decades back. It doesn’t take long for things to move from fizzle to bang. Opener ‘I Confess’ begins as a nondescript ballad before erupting into a Phil Spector-esque epic.
Amid what for some might seem a surfeit of ponderosity (‘Inglewood’), there’s the classy ‘Sugar Buzz’ with its stirringly upbeat, roots feel, while the tantasingly pleasant ‘A Sleep With No Dreaming’ has that trademark languorous Lang twang we all know and (most of us) love. Even when the material or the arrangements tend towards the workmanlike, her Orbisonian vocal scores time and again, especially on ‘Perfect Word’ (available free from her website) with its sizzling blues guitar and steel solo, and her beguiling cover of Talking Heads’ ‘Heaven’. The sonorous ‘Sorrow Nevermore’ is exemplary country rock too.
Lang’s new band, toting routine pedal steel and banjo, helps the album explore both sides of the border between country and easy listening. Although there’s nothing here to touch Absolute Torch and Twang, this is an album worth your time. Co-produced by Lang’s writing partner Joe Pisapia in Nashville, it’s full of personality but, at only 40 minutes, is perhaps a little too short.