I can still remember the first time that I heard Morcheeba’s 1996 debut disc Who Can You Trust? I remember the way that lead vocalist Skye Edwards’s silky vocals draped over the jazzy and trippy musical landscape cultivated by Paul and Ross Godfrey. It was chilling and thrilling. Charango (Reprise/Sire) continues in the Morcheeba tradition, combining strings, guitars, beats and Edwards’s singular voice. ‘Slow Down’ and ‘Otherwise’ arrive like clouds of smoke, lingering just over your head. No relation to the Jethro Tull tune of the same name (although it does have a flute), ‘Aqualung’ blows in on beats and scratches, as if it fell off of an Italian movie soundtrack from the 1960s. A bluesy harmonica introduces the steamy rhythm of ‘Sao Paulo,’ and Skye shares lead vocals with Kurt Wagner on the he said/she said of ‘What New York Couples Fight About.’ ‘Undress Me Now’ revisits Brazil, while ‘Women Lose Weight,’ featuring Slick Rick is bound to earn the ire of feminists everywhere. The instrumental ‘The Great London Traffic Warden Massacre,’ closes the video-enhanced disc on a cinematic note.
I recently caught a rerun of an early episode of Twin Peaks (Lara Flynn Boyle was so young! Michael Ontkean and James Marshall were so hot!) on cable TV. There was a scene in a roadhouse and Julee Cruise was standing on-stage in front of the microphone in a black leather motorcycle jacket. The gossamer tones coming from her mouth, in that setting, were just one of the many contradictions that made Twin Peaks such a pleasure to watch that first season. A diva of the chill-out nation, Cruise has also appeared on openly gay artist Khan’s three most recent albums. In fact, Khan, co-wrote the title track of The Art of Being A Girl (Water Music) with Cruise. Artful indeed, these songs wrap themselves around the listener like a vintage mink stole in the desert (check out the cover of Henry Mancini’s ‘Slow Hot Wind’), turning up the heated ear massage a few notches on ‘You’re Staring At Me,’ ‘Shine,’ ‘Beachcomber Voodoo,’ and ‘The Fire In Me.’ Cruise also revisits ‘Falling’ (from her 1989 breakthrough album Floating Into The Night) with assistance from Khan.
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