There is an article in the NYTimes Weekly Magazine on Shelby Lynne - she is putting out an album covering Dusty Springfield tunes, and the article focuses on the struggles of her career despite her musical brilliance.
So I went back and dusted off my copy of I am Shelby Lynne, the CD that won a Grammy and was supposed to be her breakthru equivalent of Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club (even produced by the same guy, Bill Bottrell).
I have listened to it a few times, but revisiting it again, I have to say: It is a brilliant album. I can say without reservation that whatever reason this CD didn’t break through, it had nothing to do with the actual music.
The overlaps with Crow are big - about half the songs leave me thinking about which Crow album they would appear on, and between which songs. (as an aside, I have a profound respect for Sheryl Crow as a singer and producer; in some ways, she is both blessed and cursed to be very attractive and have a “whiskey kitten” voice - I put her on a level with Carole King as a master of songcraft who happens to be a woman).
But where Crow’s CD has been steeped in the Eagles and other SoCal soft-rock-that-evolved-into-New-Country, Lynne’s has a bigger dose of straight-up R&B and 60’s Countrypolitan - so the string arrangements both sound right and stand out as sounding different. Some of the songs are very “wet” - the vocals are mixed with a lot of reverb - like the new Robert Plant / Alison Krauss CD produced by T-Bone Burnett.
Bottom line is that it is a great CD - she sounds authentic and accessible; if she brings that to this new Springfield covers CD, count me in.