Wendy & Bonnie

leposi · 19.10.2006 18:20

Sen mä vaan sanon, että tämä Genesis-albumi on ehkä yksi maailman parhaista. Mulle tulee aina niin hyvä olo kun sitä kuuntelen. Sellainen ahniinehkämaailmassasittenkinonjotainmukavaajaihanaa. puspus.

Oikeesti joku By the Sea -kappale. Hyvä jumala se on kaunis. Kylmät väreet vaan ja sellasta. Mieletöntä!

Arvio levystä:

"It's hard to remember a time when "teen pop" wasn't brain-dead. The genre has always been filled with ham-fisted emotional statements and triple-sanded pop hooks. And even though these are especially dire times for teen-oriented music, it's not like the Bay City Rollers or Frankie Avalon ever succeeded in making big statements to their generation--or even anything worth humming many years hence.

But what about the other kind of "teen pop"--the kind that's made by teenagers instead of for them? Buddy Holly was only nineteen when he began his recording career; Tommy Bolin had made two albums with Zephyr by the time he turned 20. And certainly, in every town in America, there was at least one band of high-school kids writing original songs and daring to dream big. Most of them were as bad as Johnny Bravo, though, and they're best left in the past.

Then again, San Francisco in the mid-60s was a different place, maybe the only place in America with a fully cross-pollinated music scene. Wendy and Bonnie Flower (their real names, believe it or not) were fortunate enough to grow up there at that time, and to have connections to Cal Tjader, the foremost non-Latino in the Latin jazz movement. Tjader helped the sisters land a record contract; in 1968, they dove into the studio with some of LA's top session musicians and recorded their Genesis album.

The album went nowhere upon its 1969 release; their record label tanked, their producer died, and Wendy and Bonnie might have vanished into history with all the other garage bands. But a few copies of Genesis fell into the right hands, giving the album a lasting underground buzz. For most of the 80s and 90s, it was an album more often talked about than heard, acquiring a near-legendary status among fans of 60s psychedelic pop.

Finally, in 2001, the Sundazed label acquired the rights to Genesis and released an expanded version on CD.

Listening to Genesis is a walk backwards to the late 60s. Sonically, the album is sort of a folk/lounge/Debussy mashup whose most distinguishing characteristic is the powerful blend of Wendy and Bonnie's voices. The session players (aces like Jim Keltner, Larry Carlton, and Michael Melvoin) try their best to keep the sound out of the coffeehouse, but Wendy's songs simply reek of caffeine and study hall. There's a melodic and harmonic sophistication that one might not expect from a teenage songwriter, but it's clear that Wendy's stylistic horizons were somewhat limited. (Although the sisters' penchant for suddenly breaking into madrigal-type singing in the middle of folk-pop songs is certainly intriguing.)

And the lyrics, my gosh, the lyrics . . . I can guess what "The Paisley Window Pane" is supposed to be about, and a bitter love song like "You Keep Hanging Up On My Mind" could only have been written back when people actually talked about minds. (Or had them, I suppose.) The lyrics today seem almost painfully optimistic, though that probably says more about our times than it does the late 60s. Because you just know a lot of Boomers had words like Wendy and Bonnie's in their journals: "If I could ride the wind/High above the things which trouble me/Far above the human race/Forgetting what's really happening."

The lyrics are shot through with hippy-dippy sentiment, but the music more than compensates. The sisters' harmonies are simply gorgeous. So much so, in fact, that it's difficult to listen to Genesis all the way through--after about seven or eight tracks, it gets a little overwhelming, like trying to eat a giant wedge of blue cheese. It's better appreciated in small doses--in fact, this album would make killer chill-out mix-tape source material.

Oh, and there's one other thing you'll notice upon listening to Genesis: you'll frequently hear a little musical moment or two that will make you think of the Bangles. They were such Wendy and Bonnie fans, they asked Bonnie to join the group. She declined."

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/12/193404.php

Ihastukaa!

Wendy and Bonnie - By the Sea .mp3