Nicole Atkins: Neptune City
Nicole Atkins sings of Neptune City on her debut
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Wednesday, 15, Oct 2008 07:40
Columbia Records, out now.
In a nutshell...
Orchestral. Full-throated. Singular. Reinvigorating.
What's it all about?
Released back in 2007 Stateside, this is the debut album by New Jersey's Nicole Atkins, featuring a much fuller sound than her debut EP, supplied by her accomplished band , The Sea. It was produced Tore Johansson, best known for his work with The Cardigans, although the album was reputedly later tampered with by the supreme Rick Rubin.
Who's it by?
Nicole Atkins is a singer-songwriter from the home of Bruce Springsteen and Tony Soprano, finally getting the UK attention she deserves following her show-stealing performance on Later with Jools Holland - show-stealing being quite a feat since other acts that week included the all-conquering Metallica and Kings of Leon.
As an example...
"Maybe if I paid attention/I could learn to/Love the landscape/I was born to/By the river in the rain/Let me make it new again." - Neptune City
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
This album has already been out for some time in the States without making massive waves in the mainstream. And that may well be the way it continues over here. In a way these songs are better self-discovered than foisted upon people - that is why those who caught Jools Holland would do well to seek out and treasure this release for themselves.
What the others say
"Nicole Atkins is the kind of New Jersey dreamer who thinks it's more romantic to fantasize about leaving a small town than to actually get the hell out of Dodge. And, damn, if she isn't convincing." - Rolling Stone
"Warbling like a radio with dodgy batteries, or vinyl that's warped in the sun, over dull and unoriginal country ballads that are as forgettable as they are non-descript, this really is an album that's going nowhere." - MusicOMH
So is it any good?
One of the greatest things about Nicole Atkins, on the evidence of this debut album, is her ability to re-ignite your belief in musical conceits that have long become worthless, mauled by the grubby hands of popular, lowest-common-denominator, culture.
Firstly, not only is she a singer-songwriter, her music is what might loosely be described as 60s-influenced. This automatically sets all sorts of Duffy-shaped alarm bells ringing in mediocre mid-morning radio-friendly unison. But whilst so many of the current chart-bothering crop offer a pale imitation of already-featherweight Dusty Springfield off-cuts, Atkins is closer in spirit to Nancy Sinatra; orchestral and broody. Her vampish The Way It Is sounds like a sultry modern Bond theme - if 'modern Bond theme' didn't mean Coca-Cola shaped indie guitar squalls and primadonna vocal tics.
The Way It Is also marks the point when it hits you - you're in the presence of A Voice. To have A Voice has become synonymous with prime time Saturday night TV and silly girls who 'never had nothing never' taking on Whitney or Mariah and 'really making that song their own'. It is so refreshing to hear a female singer let go, display serious and unique vocal presence and not come off like a maniacal clone. Nicole Atkins' is an enviable sound - like Patti Smith without the mumbo jumbo or Chrissie Hynde circa I Go To Sleep - ie before the MOR yearnings really took hold.
This would mean nothing though, were it not for the strength of the songwriting. Any track called Cool Enough immediately tempts scorn but it actually turns out to be a rather touching treatise on modern indifference and material obsession. Like much of this album it recalls Lucinda Williams' benchmark album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, in singular spirit if not in sound.
Neptune City and Brooklyn's On Fire form an impressive mid-album double-whammy - though it is odd that the album takes its name from the former, a delicate reflective paean to a small-town left behind, rather than the latter, a joyous, more typical, Rufus Wainwright-esque celebration of life.
Neptune City is not difficult. It is not necessarily groundbreaking. But it is accomplished, memorable, never once derivative and, more importantly, faith-restoring.
8/10
Stephen Braund