Eddi Reader - Angels and Electricity  (1999 Compass Records)

 By Ellen Rawson 

    “Where are you now?” Eddi Reader asks of a long-ago summer love in the chorus of “Kiteflyer’s Hill,” the opening track to her latest release, Angels and Electricity. Finally released in the US more than a year after its European and Japanese debuts, this CD could be the one that finds this Glasgow-born artist air play on American AAA radio station.  

    Reader herself has gone from busking on Glasgow streets to being a member of the now-defunct Fairground Attractions to hitting the UK charts with her solo work.  If there is some justice in the musical world, she’ll hit the US charts also and not languish as yet another highly talented performer largely ignored by radio programmers.

    Other musicians, however, already respect Reader’s talents.  She’s toured with the Eurythmics and recently appeared with Jacqui McShee and Fairport Convention at the ‘99 Cropedy Folk Festival.Singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith even wrote “On a Whim,” a gentle song about being nagged by doubts about life and love juxtaposed with a light-hearted melody, specifically for Reader.   Her cover of former Fairground Attractions band mate Mark Nevin’s “Kiteflyer’s Hill” also succeeds on this disc.  Its winsome melody takes the adult listener to the days of bittersweet youthful summer love and back to contemporary days of wondering just what happened to that love -- to that possibility.

    While I could imagine “Kiteflyer’s Hill” on AAA radio, “Prayer Wheel,” the disc’s second track, also about lost love, is the one that truly cries for airplay.  Co-written by Reader and her long-time musical collaborator, Boo Hewerdine, it’s an upbeat rock-oriented tune with a lively chorus.  The album’s title comes from a verse here:

I can live with your life and dream of wires
Or I can live my life among the angels and electricity.

    The majority of songs are written by Reader and Hewerdine or by Hewerdine, who also co-produced the album with Reader, on his own. Their collaboration on “Barcelona Window” produces a lush other-wordly arrangement.  “California” brings in a slow and easy southwestern feel with a slide guitar as Reader sings of California dreaming in the late ‘90s and wraps her Scottish accent around the state’s name rather charmingly.

    Reader’s cover of Hewerdine’s “Bell, Book, and Candle” features a simple rhythm, with a strong bass in the background, but it’s her voice that gives the song its strength.  Reader’s voice indeed is rich and lush. Nurtured on singing Elvis Presley with her parents and later moving to traditional Scottish and English material (this release, unlike most of her solo work, does not include a traditional song) and pop/rock sounds, she uses her voice to make the emotional hits that most singers only yearn to find.   It’s the kind of voice that allows almost any song to sound good.  Of course, when she’s working with strong material, such as found on this CD, the music only becomes better as she enfolds her voice about the songs, whether it depicts the thoughtfulness of “Postcard,” the blurry edges of “Psychic Reader” (when she draws out and echoes the word “heart” to match the instrumentation), or the Americana feel of “Follow My Tears.” Some of the songs may be too slow-paced for listeners expecting a consistent rock feel.  However, if you take your time with them, you might come to savor Reader’s musical philosophy.

    “Clear,” the CD’s bonus track, perhaps sums up Reader’s personal take on life.  She sings:

Where we’re going, where we’ve been
When all that matters is in between 
It’s clear
we’re here.

Reader indeed is here.  Her chorus on “Prayer Wheel” admonishes her former lover not “to forget about me.”  With any luck, radio programmers won’t forget about her this time around either.

©  FEMMUSIC 1999-2008

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