Not all messages are displayed:
show all messages (7 of them)
three years pass...
Awesome! I wish I had the ambition to try to get both of her records reissued. Hopefully someone who does will read your article!
― cwkiii, Thursday, 6 November 2014 18:13 (nine years ago) link
three years pass...
Karen Alexander – Voyager (Asylum – 1978)
Chi (pronounced “shy”) Coltrane was popular with teenage girls in the 70's. When she wasn't wailing up a storm in a post-Yvonne Elliman-as-Mary-Magdalene style, she was sobbing out epic weepers that brought many a tear to the collective eye of Carole King's denim army. Chi was model pretty and had long blonde hair to die for. People don't listen to her much anymore. You can find her albums for a buck! But at least she has some measure of immortality via her smash hit “Thunder and Lightning”. Thousands of other singer/songwriters of that era got the label deal of their dreams and searched for the key that turned Melanie Safka's roller skates into gold (and Chi's clouds into sunshine), but, alas, they never found it.
Karen Alexander is one of those thousands. Two albums on David Geffen's Asylum Records, one in 1975 and one in 1978, and then she was gone for good. Both albums sank like a stone. Karen's portrait on the cover of her debut, Isn't It Always Love, is Laura Ingalls Wilder as the squarest Breck girl in the world and seems scientifically formulated to stop people from buying the record. The album itself is marred by era-appropriate too-cute “jazzy” ragtime-ish quasi-minstrelsy ditties (and in the case of a faux-Caribbean song – sadly ubiquitous in the 70's - actual cringe-worthy island patois.) Unfortunately, half the album is wonderful! Karen's original ballads and vocal prowess are fully-formed and a vision of her future magnum opus, Voyager.
For '78's Voyager, the mad scientists at Asylum devised a cover even MORE generic and anonymous than Karen's debut. No offense to Karen. Her face is fine. But it's one of the worst covers for a great album ever designed. Within that cover is, simply put, a highly personal work of art that very few people have ever heard. Discogs.com, the popular online site that sells gazillions of vinyl records every year, has NEVER sold a copy of this album.
There is some of the jazzamataz of the debut on her second effort, but it's toned down and the L.A. session hands make it work in a late-70's fern bar way. However, it’s on the intricate, deep, and dark undertow pop of songs like “Believe In Me” and “You're My Sailor” where she really shines. Every song is about love and what lurks beneath that glittering sea of love. Karen's voice is by turns rich, girlish, conversational, and profound. A voice with the weight that being burned and burning brightly for someone brings. A one-time studio back-up singer (for dollar bin faves Wendy Waldman and Maria Muldaur among others) Karen repeats the trick of her debut by multi-tracking herself until there is a bird-like chorus of Karens to support her amazing harmonic creations. The set-pieces like “Bermuda Triangle” are vast and twist and turn but are never melodramatic. You sink into them. There are also songs like “Babes In The Woods” that are just sad perfection, vocally and artistically. You have to let yourself go when listening to this album and alone is the best place to be. In your bedroom. Staring at the ceiling. Do teenagers still do that? There is so much long-lasting beauty on Voyager and it didn't last a minute in the real world. There is also nothing obvious on the album either. Dozens of listens don't turn it into comfort food. Her longing is addictive and her creativity is inspirational. If this album never finds a wider audience (It's no rare psych folk monster for Linda Perhacs fans to feast on) the only hope is that SHE finds comfort in having made something wonderful. Wherever she is. So, there's really no need for a reissue. You can buy an old copy for nothing. It's waiting to sweep you off your feet.
― scott seward, Thursday, 8 February 2018 19:49 (six years ago) link