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Catalog No. SACD205
Price: $19.98
THE RAVEN
by Rebecca Pidgeon
Reflective yet contemporary, Rebecca's lovely voice rings with honest, unpretentious confidence and vivid tenderness. While her Celtic melodies set the mood, her lyrics tell stories, full, rich, textured, and open hearted. This amazing talent makes her U.S. debut with The Raven, Chesky Record's most striking, powerful and fully realized vocal record to date.
With a singing/songwriting career now spanning three audiophile quality solo albums as well as a recently released DVD, Chesky Records recording artist Rebecca Pidgeon has demonstrated an uncanny ability to span a wide range of vocal and song styles. Born in the USA but raised in Scotland, she is equally accomplished as a motion picture, theatre and television actress. Singing professionally since her teens, Rebecca Pidgeon's ability to radiate emotion shines through in the two albums reviewed here.
The Raven (Chesky Records JD115) is a lovely and vocally intense album that explores the dimensions of Rebecca Pidgeon's voice against a light acoustic environment. A studio recording, this light and airy music is perfectly suited for Chesky's 128x oversampling high resolution technology production techniques to preserve the quality of the underlying talent. Rebecca's voice carries the album with minimal yet very effective string instrumentation. The music has a light and airy feel building its power from the heartfelt delivery of the songs. The album's thirteen tracks span lighter singing styles that illustrate both Rebecca's vocal range and textures she uses to evoke different emotions. The music is exceptionally calming in its folky, bluesy or folk-rocky (not new age) approach, almost perfectly suited to a coffee shop or cafe atmosphere, or for Sunday morning radio.
The light and airy songs ("Kalerka," "You Got Me" and "Heart and Mind") have effective, yet light instrumentation and are lyrically and vocally very strong. "The Witch" is the one Celtic-oriented track. Sung entirely solo, mid-range vocals carry the tune. The title track is sung almost a capella with very light—mostly string—instrumentals. "Seven Hours" is sung in a similar highly dramatic style with highly effective vocalise and light percussion used to further establish the mood of the song.
In contrast to the other tracks with more guitar, backing vocals and an overall lusher tone and a chorus with a hook, "You Need Me There" is a very nice and slightly more accessible tune. The bluesy numbers on the album include "Grandmother" and "Her Man Leaves Town" which has some very interesting electronic keyboards added to the piano and string accompanyment. The highly enjoyable folk rock tune "Wendy's Style Shop" has a robust yet light chorus and, like "Remember Me" and "The Height of Land" features some of the most diverse vocal excursions of the album.
The certain highlight of the album is "Spanish Harlem" which Rebecca Pidgeon became became renowned for covering. Sung basicall a capella with only minimal processing and beginning with just light bass and even lighter piano backing track, it is by far the stongest song on the album. The instrumental bridge only serves to join the vocal segments of the track. It is certainly most illustrative of Rebecca Pidgeon's vocal talent.
As her first solo album, The Raven clearly illustrates the broad range of talent that the stunning Rebecca Pidgeon posesses and serves as a wonderful introduction to this artist's recorded work. |
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Rebecca Pidgeon (p)1999, "The Raven"
