Beauty And Crime

Aww. It’s hard not to nurse a little crush for the music of Suzanne Vega. As the folk laureate of Greenwich Village, she sings, like many of her contemporaries, about battered wives and abused children with a touching sadness, her clear, sweet vocal articulating from the eye of an emotional hurricane. Never mawkish, all minor chords and lullaby voice, she has been called the “musical Bronte sister”, though the arch, sweetly barbed observational prose of Jane Austen might be closer to the mark.
Six years have passed since the delicate ballads of Songs Of Red And Grey failed to make waves, but for her seventh studio album and first release for legendary American label Blue Note, Ms. Vega picks up exactly where she left off.
The gorgeous ‘Frank And Ava’ recounts the stormy romance of Sinatra and Gardner, drinking and fighting and regretfully concluding that; “It’s not enough to be in love”. The impossibly pretty ‘As You Are Now’ is a love song for her daughter.
The best moments, however, come with bittersweet undercurrents. ‘Edith Wharton’s Figurines’ may be Vega’s finest ballad since ‘The Queen And The Soldier’; an aching tale of low self-esteem that marries the work of the New York novelist to the tragedy of First Wives’ Club author Olivia Goldsmith, who died during a minor cosmetic surgery procedure.
The far, far away quality of Ms. Vega’s dreamy voice finds good company in KT Tunstall’s backing vocals and the shimmering guitar of Lee Ranaldo. It might not convert the masses but it’d be nice to think there’s a place for such literate otherworldliness in the big, bad game of rock.