SUZANNE VEGA: Songs in Red and Gray CD PROMO. Highly recommended.

Description

Songs in Red and Gray is the sixth studio album release by New York-based singer/songwriter and musician Suzanne Vega. The album was Vegas final album for A&M Records (with whom she had been with since 1983) and also marks the divorce with her husband and producer Mitchell Froom. Lyrically, most of the songs deal with the ending of the marriage, notably Widows Walk, If I Were a Weapon, and Soap and Water (“slip me loose of this wedding band”).

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n26fGBkJNbXP8HbRxFVMSRqsz2DvJDIqo&feature=gws_kp_album&feature=gws_kp_artist

Check all samples:
www.allmusic.com/album/songs-in-red-and-gray-mw0000590643

or

www.amazon.com/Songs-Red-Gray-Suzanne-Vega/dp/B00005O6JG
or
www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B00005O6JG/ref=pd_krex_dp_a

Track listing:
All tracks composed by Suzanne Vega; except where indicated
“Penitent” 4:16
“Widows Walk” 3:33
“(I’ll Never Be) Your Maggie May” 3:47
“It Makes Me Wonder” 4:00
“Soap and Water” 3:03
“Songs in Red and Gray” 4:18
“Last Years Troubles” 3:35
“Priscilla” 4:14
“If I Were a Weapon” 2:45
“Harbor Song” 4:18
“Machine Ballerina” 2:57
“Solitaire” 2:10
“St. Clare” 2:30 (written by Jack Hardy)

Personnel:
Suzanne Vega lead vocal, acoustic guitar, harmony vocals, distorted acoustic guitar
Rupert Hine drum programming, bass, piano, strings, keyboards, percussion, woodwinds, orchestral percussion
Nick Hugh drum programming, synth lead
Gerry Leonard electric guitars, acoustic guitars, mandolins, zither, dulcimer
Elizabeth Taubman harmony vocals
Matt Johnson drums
Mike Visceglia bass
Jay Bellerose drums
Doug Yowell drums, percussion
Pamela Sue Man backing vocals, harmony vocals

In musical terms, it is less significant that Mitchell Froom is no longer Suzanne Vegas husband than it is that he is no longer her producer. Although Frooms experimental style helped the singer/songwriter fulfil her desire to expand beyond her folk-pop roots on her fourth and fifth albums, 99 F° and Nine Objects of Desire, his approach actually worked against the material, cluttering her intimate, direct songs with inappropriate percussion tracks and various kinds of sound processing. So, listeners who responded strongly to her first three albums but found the Froom discs off-putting (and there were plenty of them) should be alerted that, sonically, Songs in Red and Gray is ready to welcome back old fans. Produced by Rupert Hine, it has the kind of carefully played acoustic guitar work and close-up vocal miking that characterized Suzanne Vega and Solitude Standing. That makes it easier to appreciate Frooms departure from Vegas personal life as well as her professional one, however. This is very much a divorce album, its songs frequently touching on romantic discord and the resulting fall-out. Vega is both precise and artful in describing the situation. She writes by metaphor, unafraid, on “Machine Ballerina,” for example, to mix those metaphors and pile them up. That allows her some emotional distance, but never at the expense of meaning. Her concern with the dissolution of her marriage and its impact on her child is apparent in “Soap and Water” when she sings, “Daddys a dark riddle/Mamas a headful of bees/you are my little kite /carried away in the wayward breeze,” even though the lines make up a succession of metaphors. Her calm, hushed, clear singing only emphasizes the emotional torment the songs trace. The result is an album on a par with her best work.