X Factory: Making It Timeless

I've previously mentioned NZ Idol and the point of difference between its focus and that of the professional industry represented by record companies. To recap: Idol focuses on performers who are not expected or required to be songwriters, whereas the industry expects artists to be both singer and songwriter.

It is very rare indeed to find an artist these days who is signed to a major label who performs covers, and particularly one whose album has a number of them. With Amber Claire's album 'Great Escape' (Sony BMG) we find a departure from New Zealand industry norms. Producer James Hall contributes three songs, Claire two and the rest are covers, including Up On The Roof (Goffin/King), Till You Come Back To Me (Stevie Wonder), Blackbird (Lennon/McCartney), On and On (Stephen Bishop), and You Oughta Be in Love (Dave Dobbyn).

The collection of covers brings a variety of styles, the breadth of which is not commonly encountered on albums of all-original material. The stylistic variation reminds me of many albums recorded in the '60s, on which a singer would demonstrate versatility and musicianship by embracing a wide range of songs. Nowadays it is far more common for a singer to work within one stylistic strand.

The main consistency in the album comes from Claire's vocal delivery and importantly from Hall's production sensibility, which avoids cliché sounds in favour of more timeless stripped-back arrangements that let the songs do the work; uncluttered. If you're familiar with Rikki Lee Jones and her songs Wild and The Only Ones, you will know what I mean by uncluttered. In Feel Like Floating Away (Hall/Edwards) and It's a Lovely Day (Hall) we find a basic arrangement for acoustic guitar, piano, bass and drumkit (brushes) using the standard 'ii - V - I' lingua franca of light jazz.

In Grey Sky's Got the Blues Hall evokes Crystal Gayle's Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue - these classic chord progressions and rhythm section feels are a winner every time. It is the aplomb with which Hall recreates this music of the past, and with which Claire sings it that brings the timeless flavour to this album. The choice of Blackbird testifies to this also, as one of the many McCartney songs that do not buy into a pop fashion. Claire's song Loves Forgotten Bride brings musical theatre to mind with its rolling piano chords with the abrupt modulations we have come to expect from this tradition. The vocal performance coupled with the piano style here is reminiscent of Kate Bush in many ways, which is certainly not a bad comparison to make! The song ends in an unfinished way, hovering on chord IV to accompany the last line of lyric, "You're the battle never won".

If you listen to the Cowboy Junkies you will find it hard to pinpoint an old song from a new one. What does that mean?  Should we be able to make such distinctions from the musical events (pitch, rhythm, texture, timbre)? No. It is arrangement and production style that most comprehensively date-stamp your work. If you exclusively use acoustic instruments your music will be devoid of attachments to any particular decade. The basic nuts and bolts of rock are the same from decade to decade. What is the thing that date-stamps Def Leppard's 'Hysteria' album, or Bon Jovi's 'Slippery When Wet'? The production style. The guitar notes in those songs could have been written in the '60s.

Why does McCartney's Yesterday continue to outsell most other songs from any decade? Its meaning is not fixed in the decade, but is for all time - it doesn't sound like '60s music does it?

The musical theatre tradition is equally reliant on particular structures that ensure its permanence. The clichés of a good show tune remain undeniably the most attractive thing for the show audience - it is the familiarity of these structures and techniques that brings old listeners to new shows. Can one easily distinguish a piece of musical theatre of the Seventies from the Eighties? If the pieces are performed on the same instruments (invariably they are) the answer is no. How can you tell the difference between a piece of '70s disco and a piece of '90s house (the musical elements are incredibly similar)? The production style! Think about Robbie Williams' Angels and Ham/Evans' I Can't Live if Living is Without You (made famous by Harry Nilsson before Mariah!). The pop ballad style hadn't changed a great deal in the nearly 30 years separating those two songs.

Long after the loops and samples of today are embarrassingly uncool, Amber Claire's 'Great Escape' will have ongoing value. There's an old saying about pop songwriting: if the vocal works with an acoustic guitar or piano, then the song will probably work in any arrangement. If it don't, it probably won't.
 
Stephen Small is the co-ordinator of Popular Music Studies at the University of Auckland. He can be
contacted at s.small@auckland.ac.nz