Kirsten Lambert - From a Window to a Screen (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

In the 1980s, Chris Stamey was a member of the dBs, a North Carolina-based band that was too smart for its own good. Though they associated with big names like REM, the dBs never made much noise themselves in the marketplace. Stamey and Peter Holsapple were the two main songwriters, and over the years have done solo, duo, and reunion albums, all at a quality that fickle radio programmers and the buying public just couldn’t digest. When I heard that the just-released debut album by a chanteuse named Kirsten Lambert was produced by Stamey, who also wrote all 12 songs (one, the title track, is a dBs cover; another comes from a Stamey/Holsapple project), I had to check it out.

On my first listen, I was disappointed because I couldn’t hear the Stamey in it; subsequent listenings, however, have delivered the rewards I assumed were there in the 1s and 0s. Part of that Stamey magic is in its deceptive simplicity, the eschewing of fancy shifts in keys and dynamics, and the lack of “look how clever I am” hooks. In its place are lovely little songs that sound like standards but are 21st-century originals, some of which deserve one day to become standards. Even the titles suggest an earlier era of singers in tuxedos and gowns crooning before a small orchestra: “What Is This Music That I Hear?,” “On An Evening Such As This,” “I Didn’t Mean To Fall In Love With You,” and “There’s Not A Cloud In The Sky.” This is not a case of Stamey parodying the classics, as Neil Innes did with Beatles songs for The Rutles TV movie and albums; rather, he has internalized the pathos and patois of the Great American Songbook. With respect and a master’s touch he has made what’s old new again.

TRACKLIST

1. Kirsten Lambert - What is This Music That I Hear?
2. Kirsten Lambert - On an Evening Such as This
3. Kirsten Lambert - The Woman Who Walks the Sea
4. Kirsten Lambert - Occasional Shivers
5. Kirsten Lambert - Insomnia
6. Kirsten Lambert - Song for Johnny Cash
7. Kirsten Lambert - I Didn't Mean to Fall in Love with You
8. Kirsten Lambert - There's Not a Cloud in the Sky
9. Kirsten Lambert - From a Window to a Screen
10. Kirsten Lambert - There's a Love
11. Kirsten Lambert - 27 Years in a Single Day
12. Kirsten Lambert - And I Love Him



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