Shawn Colvin Albums (10)
What The Critics Say
Shawn Colvin chose a three-night solo acoustic stand at San Francisco's legendary Yoshi's (a jazz club) to record her second live offering. Simply titled Live, the set was compiled from songs played on those three nights, and serves as a delightful, intimate overview of her career. Every album, from her Columbia debut Steady On through to her 2006 Nonesuch debut, These Four Walls, is represented here. The 15-song set list is canny and tight; 12 of these selections she either wrote or co-wrote with co-producer John Leventhal. Favorites such as "Diamond in the Rough," "Ricochet in Time," "Polaroids," "Sunny Came Home," and "Trouble" are showcased in versions that, while almost utterly faithful to their original recorded versions, become definitive here in this stripped down, on-a-wire presentation. Other notables include the beautiful "Nothing Like You," the haunted "A Matter of Minutes," the revelatory "Shotgun Down the Avalanche," and "Fill Me Up." There are three covers here, too: reprises of her readings of Robbie Robertson's "Twilite," Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place" from her Cover Girl outing, and a solo blues version of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" that was issued as an in-studio single version in 2007 (this one is longer and far more beautiful). And while it's true that Colvin has excellent interpretive skills, this set is a almost a forum on her as a songwriter. These songs hold up to repeated listening in either their original studio forms or in this bare showcase because they are simply great songs. They have universal themes no matter how personal, and can be lyrically interpreted in numerous ways. More than this, they can be heard as either slices of a moment in time or as in-the-moment statements of emotion. Colvin fans will be delighted by this collection, and anyone remotely curious would do well to make Live her introduction to the artist's work. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
For starters, it's hard to believe -- and wonderful to comprehend -- that Nonesuch is doing such a bang-up job in 2006. Their roster is ever expanding from the Black Keys and Pat Metheny to Brad Mehldau and Sam Phillips, from Stephin Merritt to Shawn Colvin -- they are an impossible label to predict, but their track record of late is impeccable. As for Colvin, it's been a while. Other than a video called Live in Bora Bora, and a greatest-hits collection, she hasn't recorded an album of new material in five years. But it was worth the wait. Working with longtime collaborator John Leventhal (who in addition to being producer is a virtual one-man band, though drummer Shawn Pelton and Rick DePofi help out on percussion and horns, respectively), and Colvin co-wrote almost the entire album with him. There are two covers -- of the Bee Gees "Words" and Paul Westerberg's "Even As We Are" -- Colvin wrote "I'm Gone" on her own. Sonically, you already know what to expect. This is an album drenched in acoustic guitars, some electric ones, gentle keyboards, and poignant songs. Colvin always gets to the meat of the matter in her lyrics. She trims it all back to the bone to see what's there, gleaming and gritty. These Four Walls is a record of ups and downs, about taking responsibility and surviving one's mistakes. Tracks like "The Bird," with its jangly, ringing, 12-string electric guitars and claims of regret, resignation, and responsibility is a love song, but one that is wholly original. The characters are broken and while they trust in the redemption of love, they know it's just tough to get through: "What I like about time is it don't ask why/What I like about love is it makes me cry..." On the title cut, with only an acoustic guitar carrying her smoky lithe voice, Colvin states "I'm gonna die in these four walls/I've had enough and I've tried it all/I'll watch the day break and I'll see the night fall/In these four walls...Now I can see the life I have to make . ." Layered guitars, a mandolin, shuffling drums and Greg Leisz's pedal steel waft on in and carry it home. The now-ubiquitous Patty Griffin and Marc Cohn make vocal appearances on "Cinnamon Road," the album's centerpiece but far from its best track. Better are the sexy as all get out "Venetian Blue," the subtly yearning "Fill Me Up," which opens the set, and the poetic and utterly moving "Summer Dress." The two covers work alright, but they don't stack up to Colvin's and Leventhal's songs, which are more poignant, musical, and imaginative. The rocking "Let It Slide" (with a guest vocal from Teddy Thompson) is an example of what Colvin and her voice do best -- emote matter of factly, where passion is a slow burn and precarious by nature -- and the tune's chorus is infectious. While sonically and texturally there is not a whole lot different here, that's just fine. When you can write and sing like Colvin can, all you have to do is keep putting the songs out there. So many of her peers in the "grrrl revolution" of the '90s are struggling to find their way, while Colvin has been on hers continually, refining, recording only when she has something to say, and being so honest it's almost painful. These Four Walls is an achievement, another step on a gloriously rocky road that is far from its end. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Whole New You is an appropriate title for Shawn Colvin's fourth studio album of new material, her first in four-and-a-half years. Much has happened in the interim. In career terms, Colvin had made several modestly selling albums before A Few Small Repairs appeared in the fall of 1996. The album was another modest seller until "Sunny Came Home" hit the singles charts in the spring of 1997, going on to hit number one on the adult contemporary lists and the Top Ten on the pop charts. Then it won the Song of the Year and Record of the Year Grammys, while A Few Small Repairs spent a year in the charts and sold close to a million copies. That means that Colvin can no longer be considered a niche artist, but must compete in the mainstream, even though she is actually a one-hit wonder up to this point. She reacted as you might suspect an artist would after a breakthrough release; she maintained her exposure by doing a Christmas album and some soundtrack work while taking her time on a follow-up. Personally, her life has been at least as tumultuous. A Few Small Repairs was her divorce album, but during the lengthy run-up to Whole New You she remarried and had a child, which clearly has given her a different perspective (and another reason for that title). Within all this change, however, there are certain constants. She continues to collaborate with writer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist John Leventhal, who continues to come up with imaginative musical tracks clearly informed by mid-'60s pop sensibilities. The title track (and first single), for example, is distinctly Beatles-esque, with twangy guitar and George Martin-style spare string arrangement, while "Bonefields" employs what by now should be called the Burt Bacharach Memorial Horn Trick, a sole flugelhorn playing a countermelody at the end of the tune. The arrangements are full of such echoes, but they remain echoes; Leventhal weaves instruments and effects together evocatively, but not overtly. Something similar can be said about Colvin's lyrics, which she sings in her characteristically becalmed voice, with its timbre that suggests Helen Kane (the "boop-boop-de-doop" girl) without the humor and her phrasing that gulps syllables for emotional resonance. Though she is given to making simple statements, they are imbedded in impressionistic reflections on life. Over and over, she sings of being committed, whether she wants to be or not: "I can't find my way to stay and I can't find my way to go and I can't give up without a fight" ("A Matter of Minutes"); "Anywhere you go I will go there" ("Anywhere You Go"); "I'm bound to you and there's no in-between" ("Bound to You"). In a sense, the album's 11 tracks make up one elliptical song in which the narrator thinks about the choices she has made recently with a sense that those choices are irrevocable. For the most part, she doesn't mind that, it seems, but she's certainly aware of it. Amid the various references to steadfastness and the allusions to childhood, there is little passion, but plenty of clear-headed acceptance. This is an album about marriage and family, not love, at least not the kind of romantic love that most pop songs are concerned with; in fact, the word "love" is never mentioned. For that reason, the most interesting song is the most complex one, "Another Plane Went Down," a seemingly random assemblage of news reports and nightmares that, in its way, feeds into the album's main theme. After all, to have a sense that you have finally found a home that depends on your relationship to other people is to fear that some accident will take it away from you. Whole New You may not contain a song that will spark sales and awards the way "Sunny Came Home" did ("Bound to You" would make a great single, though), but anyone who, like the artist herself, has come to the safe harbor of family life (even with its many challenges) after a long, uncertain voyage through personal relationships and life experiences will appreciate Colvin's ruminations on the subject. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Holiday Songs and Lullabies'
Release Date 9/1/1998
Tracks 14
Label Sony
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Shawn Colvin's seasonal album is in effect a musical adaptation of the children's book Lullabies & Night Songs, which, like the CD, features illustrations by Maurice Sendak. As such, it includes mostly traditional tunes, along with some Christmas standards such as "Silent Night" and "Christmas Time Is Here," and several Alec Wilder compositions and arrangements, among them settings of lyrics by Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling. Often employing a string quartet, Colvin turns in calm but deeply felt performances of the songs for a set appropriate for putting the children to sleep on Christmas Eve. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'A Few Small Repairs'
Release Date 10/1/1996
Tracks 12
Label Columbia
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
A Few Small Repairs, the proper follow-up to Fat City, was recorded on the heels of Shawn Colvin's divorce. And while the album is certainly a response, she avoids the obvious clichés in dealing with the aftermath, revealing instead the complex thought processes and complete range of human emotion, from anger, sadness, confusion, yearning, and disillusionment to resolve and recovery. Colvin has always been a songwriter of note, but with A Few Small Repairs, she reaches new heights, painting hauntingly vivid images that address not only relationships but also life in general with great insight. The subject matter predictably gives a generally dark mood to the album, but musically, the results are both diverse and irresistibly catchy. A Few Small Repairs marks a reunion with former collaborator/producer John Leventhal, and the two have found a perfect blend between words, music, and tasteful, organic arrangements for Colvin's finest effort to date. ~ Chris Woodstra, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
It's a folkie tradition and an economic boon to carry with you tapes to sell at your gigs, and before Shawn Colvin released her first Columbia Records album, Steady On, she used to sell a tape made at an April 1988 show in Somerville, Massachusetts, containing acoustic versions of songs that later turned up on her Columbia releases--"Diamond in the Rough," "Shotgun Down the Avalanche," "I Don't Know Why," and "Knowing What I Know Now," among others. In the studios, such songs acquired arrangements and other instrumentation, which may have made them more commercial, but didn't improve them. Now, Colvin's management has launched Plump Records and released her live tape (with a couple of additions), though her contract with Columbia is still in effect. And guess what? It's still her best recording. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
When Shawn Colvin first turned up playing Greenwich Village folk clubs in the early 1980s, she used to perform a variety of cover songs, often taking rock recordings and re-imagining them for her girl-with-guitar format. When Colvin began recording in the late '80s, however, she concentrated on her own original material. Cover Girl brings her interpretive abilities back into focus. Songs like the Police's "Every Little Thing [He] Does Is Magic" and Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" are the most radical reworkings here, but not the best, perhaps because they depend on their original productions. Colvin is more successful in choosing classic but not well-known songs already in the folk idiom -- Greg Brown's "One Cool Remove," Willis Alan Ramsey's "Satin Sheets," and Rolly Solley's "Killing the Blues." A fan from the old Village days can only lament that she didn't choose to include her version of Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet." ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
For her second album, Shawn Colvin took a temporary break from longtime collaborator and producer John Leventhal, teaming up instead with Larry Klein. And while the strongest songs -- "Tennessee," "Climb On (A Back That's Strong)," and "Object of My Desire" -- are Colvin/Leventhal collaborations, credit should be given to Klein, who incorporated a glossy, more dynamic production and top-notch session players for a stronger and more accessible album. In addition to turning in a strong batch of songs, Colvin shows much more diversity, tackling everything from rootsy rockers to more sensitive folk ballads with equally passionate delivery. "I Don't Know Why" (the first song she wrote) and "Round of Blues" both found considerable success in adult contemporary radio formats, adding to her growing fan base. ~ Chris Woodstra, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Sonically, Steady On is a triumph, with its emotional intimacy captured with smooth precision. Vocally, Colvin's tender, sometimes whisper-like performances are astonishing and haunting, provocative and seductive all at once. Then there are the songs that flow so effortlessly into one another that to remove even one would seemingly upset the entire balance of the cosmos as we know it. The sly Colvin adeptly plays with words, beats, phrasing, and rhymes, focusing not just on the meaning, but also the feel and rhythm of the lyrics to great effect. Having once claimed that she tends to write about the "positive side of the painful experience," this album proves her point, for even if you do listen amidst gray skies and drizzles, you will be soothed to the point of contentment. The opening strains of the wistful title track set the mood and ease you into Colvin's head and heart, as you embark on this journey with her to discover countless souls and their heretofore untold truths. On a album full of great songs, "Shotgun Down the Avalanche" still stands as one of her finest compositions, with its metaphoric imagery of riding an out-of-control emotional tide as one would cascade helplessly down a mountain of snow. The requisite troubadour-on-the-road tune, "Ricochet in Time," is made ever more poignant by Colvin's sleepy vocal track, bringing home the weariness that is a very large part of being an artist on tour. Steady On is a must have for anyone who loves acoustic music created in the grand tradition of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, two legends Colvin now counts as contemporaries. ~ Kelly McCartney, All Music Guide
