From Amazon.com
Excellent
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: Excellent music from Nanci. Title track is my favorite, but the others are just as good. Avoid her live concerts due to her liberal bias and agenda. Love her music, hate her politics. It is amazing how being an artist makes one so dang smart about everything!
Flawed in places but well worth a listen nonetheless!
Album Rating: (4 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: I hate to say it, but of all of Nanci's albums I have, this one is the least best. Every artist has a weaker patch, though, re: Pink Floyd with THE FINAL CUT and REM's later material. That's not to say there's no fine moments though! CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS is overall a great listen. I'll get the weaker song reviews out of the way first - LOST HIM IN THE SUN steals a guitar riff from The Searchers and is very repetitive at times. There is also this Amazing Grace reference on the end of LAST SONG FOR MOTHER. This is a nice song, but come on, the equally wonderful Beth Nielsen Chapman did this much better at the end of I FIND YOUR LOVE - well, that song in the movie CALENDAR GIRLS! Now to the many highlights! Great title track which would have done well in the charts with plenty of radio play, very catchy and most suitable for the Alanis Morissette audience with some bittersweet vocals. MIDNIGHT IN MISSOULA is a romantic one for sure - I tend to think of being close to my wife on a cold night when I hear this. TRULY SOMETHING FINE really is as it says, reminding me of her early work in LITTLE LOVE AFFAIRS era, though I do tend to agree it sounds like HALFWAY UP THE STAIRS at times! COTTON - have I heard this ballad with top piano from James Hooker in a movie somewhere? Wow! This one was amazing. A romantic comedy tale of searching for a lost love miles away, in this case in the Deep South - Nanci just does a bit of the accent well! Now to the rockier PEARL'S EYE VIEW with some great guitar riffing to boot. This makes the CD well worth it - a tribute to a war photographer Dickey Chapelle who was killed in the minefields of Vietnam. Vietnam is a big inspiration for Nanci's songs more recently what with her trips over there with the VVAF, and although she has her critics on this issue, why can't she be inspired by her travels? I am always inspired by things I see abroad wherever I go to keep on with novel writing, maybe I can relate to this to well. Continuing with the Vietnam theme, ROSES ON THE 4TH OF JULY is a real tearjerker, SHAKING OUT THE SNOW is hilarious(to me anyway) and a final highlight - the symphonic weepie IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS which is just stunning.
A final word - if you're new to Nanci Griffith, this may not be the best place to begin, in my opinion - check out other albums like FLYER and OTHER VOICES OTHER ROOMS and then get this one once you've heard more. But I still loved CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS in spite of its few faults.
producing moments of genius
Album Rating: (3 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: Toward the end of the 80s Madonna was looking to reinvent herself and she agreed to do a song with Prince. The song, called "Love Song", was co-written and produced by The Purple One(at the peak of his creative genius) at his Paisley Park studio and appeared on her 'Like A Prayer' album. It was quite a revelation to her fans. Her voice never sounded that way in the past. It was more throaty, more dreamy and the sexiest it ever sounded. The song overall was not that remarkable and now the 'encounter' is best remembered as a defining moment in the breakup of Sean Penn and Madonna.
So what does this relatively obscure Madonna song have to do with the latest Nanci Griffith album? I think the same thing happened here. There was some magic happening during the recording and mixing of Nanci's vocals. I don't know how Ray Kennedy does it but he can make a singer sound like they are right in a listener's face. It is so intimate, so real the vocals just cut right through you.
This sound is evident on most tracks throughout the album but I think is clearest on "Where Would I Be" and "Midnight In Missoula" where it sounds like she is face to face in bed with you in the middle of a cold Montana night. It is breathtaking. Of course that track is also aided by first rate songwriting which we can't say for the rest of the album. No amount of production can make most the songs after track 6 sound good. I also love "Traveling Through This Part Of You", a song I wished this country would take to heart. Wow!, thank you Nanci, we needed this one!
When researching this review I had to dig out my old Madonna CD 'Like A Prayer' and they used perfumed liner notes for some reason(the crazy 80s), so now my whole house smells great(the jewel case hadn't been opened in over a decade). Perhaps Nanci could do this for her next CD, maybe persimmons.
What IS wrong here?
Album Rating: (1 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: I listened to this CD a while ago, and couldn't get it out of my player fast enough. A friend recently loaned it back to me, and I gave it a second try. It was better the second time around, but I still cannot enjoy it. I read the reviews here, but nobody nailed it for me, so here I go...
Delivery -- her affected little girl voice, to her affected country accent, to her muddled pronunciations, she sings every song differently. Listen from "The Ghost Inside" (muddled with the cry at the beginning of EVERY phrase) going into "Truly Something Fine" (little girl). Is it the same singer? I think "Where Would I Be" is in the wrong key, because she just fades right out. She's ticking with every pronunciation in the title song. She swoops down into notes, swoops up sometimes, over enunciates. Knowing her previous work, this CD is just a worsening of a trend we've seen.
Lyrics -- Weak. Metaphores galore. How many times can you say Missoula in a song? And use Enderby too, a place no one knows (North Alaska, guys). There are no more clock metaphores, all have been used in the title track. In Roses On The 4th Of July, we have a mystery of the wedding ring, and then it just slips in that he takes it off to see his buddies, but why? I'm left hanging. Vietnam at every turn (Give it a rest, unless this is supposed to be an activist album for a war gone by). Obtuse reference to things we cannot identify with: persimmons, Liverpool, Liffy, places in Vietnam, Rio, Samuel Barber and Gershwin melodies, South Dakota abound. Awkward placements, like the references to Amazing Grace and You Were On My Mind. Repetitious. I lost him in the sun how many times? Love is fine over and over? Missoula, Missoula, Missoula.
Love -- She's just ticking and that's all. You mean love will never find our Nanci? Is she giving up? She's so resigned. She's run from love. Her deceased lover still haunts her. OK, we get it! Don't give up on it, Nanci, it will still come around.
Activism -- OK, enough with the Vietnam. Honor the men and women who served, but don't remind them of their pain. In Armstrong, she's faulting us for going into space instead of feeding the children. Nice song, but annoying preaching, especially after listening to Vietnam up until that point.
Finally -- Shaking Out The Snow. Enough has been said about the horrible delivery and inappropriate growling and yelling, so I won't say any more about that. The verses just do not support the chorus. Driving with a friend, her nasty brother's trick on her at 4 years old, Tennessee, and snow plows. What do these have to do with her "frozen" heart? Nothing. It's just a collection of lyrics that only tie together by the "frozen" metaphore.
All that said, Pearl's Eye View and In The Wee Small Hours are the only seemingly cohesive songs for me.
I think we all hope that there are greater songs in Nanci's warm and loving heart that will appear in future albums, sung in the clear, strong voice that we all love. She has such a wonder band; let's hope they will guide her to be the artist she truly is.
Not the time to buy
Album Rating: (2 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: If you're not already a rabid Nanci Griffith fan, skip this one - she has a dozen recordings that are lovely. If you are a long-time fan like me, take serious note of the Amazon reviewer's comment about one song. "Irritating" is an understatement - Nanci trying without success to belt out "Shaking Out the Snow" shockingly out of key is absolutely horrifying. The lyrics are great, but what has happened to the beautiful voice I've been listening to for 20 years?
I like some Nanci albums better than others, and I've enjoyed seeing her perform live both in her youth and in her middle age. But I haven't been this disappointed (or disappointed at all) in any of her other CD's except Late Night Grande Hotel. Like that CD, there is only one good song here - the title track, in this case - and the rest is somewhere between mediocre and unlistenable. The song for her mother is nice. I don't mind when one of her recordings has a little filler, but there should be more than one or two really good songs.
I've always bought whatever Nanci recorded. With the release of "Clock Without Hands," I plan to be much more careful in the future. I don't entirely regret buying it, because I'm unlikely to buy a greatest-hits package (already have all her albums), and the title track is one of her best songs ever. I'm glad to have it. But I tend to rush to get it out of the CD player when that one song is over.
Nanci Griffith is one of my favorite singers when doing original material, and her two CD's covering great folk songs were both enjoyable and a great contribution to the world of folk music. I've tried really hard to like this CD, with repeated listenings, and I just can't manage it. You can't go wrong with most of the others - consider buying one of them first. This is simply a bad CD. I can't think of a nice way to say it. A valiant effort gone wrong?
Purchases
1 Clock Without Hands
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