Tracy Bonham

Tracy Bonham's new album, a return to recording after an absence of five years, seems to divide the opinions of critics between those who regard it as disappointing for various reasons related to their personal expectations, and those who love it. As I fall into the latter category, my inclination is to tell the critics that their personal expectations are entirely their own problem. Having been a musician myself I know well enough about critics; they're people who ask you to perform their favorite tracks every time and then complain because you never do anything new. In this case, I think Tracy has delivered something that sits very comfortably between new and old, which therefore has irritated critics at both ends of the expectation spectrum and pleased everyone else enormously.

I first saw Tracy Bonham when she was performing with Blue Man Group, a gig which most people would give an arm and a leg to get. And she left a lasting individual impression, which I have to say is pretty hard to achieve when you're on stage with an act famous for grabbing the attentions of an audience and not releasing them until the very last moment of a performance.

A highly trained and talented singer songwriter and violinist, Tracy Bonham has been classified as everything from folk to rock to indie (I read one critic whingeing that she'd failed the hard rock community by being too indie) and honestly I don't want to classify her at all. I do recommend you go visit this site and listen to a couple of the downloadable tracks, and unless your musical tastes are extraordinarily narrow, I'd be highly surprised if you don't like the new album even if you come to it uneducated about this woman's vocal and musical talents.

Masts Of Manhattan is the new album, and is themed around Tracy's new lifestyle: married and in love, living in the country and traveling to the big city, finding a balance between the two and having some thoughts about those who don't try, as in one of the songs here, "We Moved Our City To The Country", which contains the memorable lines,

"We'll bathe in puddles in the parking lots of Home Depot,
We'll lower our voices when we speak upon our cell phones,
I hear a young sparrow, oh it's your ringtone, it's your ringtone,
Well let it ring cause it sounds nice here in the country"

Anyone else who has seen the result of city folks trying to be "authentic" in the countryside of England, as I have, will immediately relate to that one, and sadly it seems the same thing happens here in the USA too. But this isn't a sad song; there are no sad songs on this album, much to the annoyance of critics who complain about a lack of substance. There's some trademark wry wit and more direct humor, shared with an appreciation and response to love and partnership. There's a directness introduced by the relatively sparse production (another cause for critics to complain along the "very nice, dear, but you shouldn't really have tried to do it yourself" line) and an eclectic mix of rhythms and styles that's won a place for this on my replay-list, which is a very short list indeed.

The website has much more information, the usual gig list - again including one with BMG this year - and if you root around the discography you'll find some older tracks to download and listen to including one that brought a younger and more edgyTracy Bonham to the attention of the public some years back, "Mother Mother":
http://www.tracybonham.com/sounds/TracyBonham-MotherMother.mp3