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Suzanne Vega
Beauty & Crime
(Blue Note)
John Metzger's #2 album for 2007
First Appeared in The Music Box, July 2007, Volume 14, #7
Written by John Metzger
Like Sam Phillips, Suzanne Vega takes a while between albums. Her latest
outing Beauty & Crime, for example, is only her third effort in 11 years.
As always, however, it was well worth the wait.
Produced by Jimmy Hogarth and mixed by Tchad Blake, Beauty & Crime
seamlessly fuses quiet, ruminative folk songs to contemporary, electronic
grooves; it merges melancholy-drenched orchestrations with psychedelically
tinged pop; and none of it is ever quite what it initially appears to be.
Opening cut Zephyr & I is laced with an elastic rhythm over which glides
the feathery backing vocals of KT Tunstall, while dance beats anchor Unbound’s
jittery melody. Elsewhere, Pornographer’s Dream shades its seductive,
Brazilian motif with darker undertones, and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo adds an
array of ethereal effects to Ludlow Street and Angel’s Doorway.
The music is remarkably easy to absorb, but the more time that is spent with Beauty & Crime, the more the arrangements begin to act like a prism, through
which filters the complexity of Vega’s emotional outpouring. It’s the lyrics,
however, that push everything along its path; they are what matter most.
A lot can happen in six years — the length of time that has separated Beauty & Crime from its predecessor Songs in Red and Gray. When the
latter album was recorded, Vega was grappling with her divorce from Mitchell
Froom, and the events of 9/11 were the nightmarish concepts of government
reports and memos that few were able or willing to envision as possible
realities. Since then, she married longtime suitor Paul Mills; terrorists used
airplanes to wipe out New York City’s Twin Towers; and Vega’s brother Tim lost
his life. Already struggling to beat his dependence upon alcohol, he was killed
by his disease less than a year after the attack, and thus he became another
uncounted victim whose world came crashing down in the wake of the unfathomable
act of violence that had been perpetrated upon the city in which he lived.
Beauty & Crime is a loosely-knit concept album that attempts to make
sense of these events. Its 11 tracks were born on the streets of New York City,
and they drift back and forth across the years, remembering the way things once
were and outlining the way things are now. Unlike most artists who have dealt
with the repercussions of 9/11, Vega avoids delving into the political
implications that have manifested themselves since. Instead, she tells tales
about people and their emotions. Her most overt references to the catastrophe
occur within Angel’s Doorway, a haunted song about a policeman stationed
at Ground Zero, and Anniversary, a tune that reflects upon the tragedy a
year after it happened. Nevertheless, everything on Beauty & Crime is
touched by malfeasance. Even when she’s not dealing directly with her urban
surroundings, her lyrics poetically paint portraits of people and places who,
like New York, have suffered for their beauty.
"Love is the only thing that matters/Love is the only thing that’s real,"
Vega sings on Ludlow Street, a eulogy for her brother. Later, on Frank
and Ava, she resigns herself to the notion that "it’s not enough to be in
love." Throughout Beauty & Crime, she provides few answers; the only
thing she does offer is a series of reflections upon specific moments. Still,
her memories, like her emotions, are fleeting, and they often are carried away
on the wisps of her surrounding musical arrangements.
When she looks at her daughter in As You Are Now, her glance is filled
with adoration. Yet, a sense of sadness simultaneously pours through her music.
It adds a bittersweet air to her words, one which stems from the unspoken
parental quandary of desiring to keep the pain of life away from one’s child and
of knowing that such a feat would be utterly impossible. Beauty and crime, it
seems, are fully intertwined. Like Frank and Ava, one can’t possibly exist
without the other. Consequently, within the devastation and wreckage of fallen
skyscrapers and broken relationships, Vega also discovers the magnificent ways
in which communities, families, and lives can be reshaped and rebuilt.  ½
Beauty & Crime is available from Amazon.com.
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50th Annual Grammy Award Winner:
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
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