Probably best known as an award winning blues singer, the
dynamic Janiva Magness releases her twelfth album, a highly personal emotional
manifesto she calls Love Wins Again,
in April. As she asserts quite clearly at the end of her liner note: “This
record is me celebrating happy.” Celebration indeed: the album’s 11 tunes,
several written by Magness and the record’s producer Dave Darling are performed
as a kind of manifesto of the singer’s joy in the knowledge that “music is
love, and it speaks, as it always has. If you listen it won’t be difficult to
hear love, happiness, intimacy, truth, rebellion, redemption, resignation,
hope, acceptance and finally the comfort of understanding.”
And almost as though the blues alone might be too much of a
generic limitation on all this happiness, Magness masterfully broadens her
musical palate with the colors of soul, rock and pop. She opens with the title
song, a hot rocker announcing “sorrow’s all the way over” because love, indeed,
“wins again.” Other highlights are the pop/blues love treat “When You Hold Me,”
the dramatic “Moth to a Flame” and a touch of Americana in “Just Another
Lesson,” a dark lyric set in a sweetly soft melody.
“Your House is Burnin’” is a rocker complete with the kind
of horn accents that have James Brown written all over it. Magness carries it
off with abandon. And if the song’s message—a warning about the miserable state
of the world—seems at odds with the album’s central message, the song does end
with a call for positive action: “Brother to brother and hand to hand/Starting
today, I’m gonna say it again/Woman to woman and skin to skin/This is the day
that we begin. . ./ To get up, break the chain/Make it right.”
There is also a gutsy cover of the Creedence Clearwater hit
“Long as I Can See the Light.” The album ends with the almost prayerful end of
life question: “Who Will Come for Me?”
The album, released by Blue Élan Records includes a small
poster backed handily by the lyrics of all the songs.
No comments:
Post a Comment