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| From | "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net> |
| Subject | Re: Top 20, etc. (Nellie McKay) |
| Date | Fri, 7 Jan 2005 13:23:40 -0500 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh Chasin" <jchasin@nyc.rr.com>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net>
>> 1. Nellie McKay -- Get Away From Me (Columbia) ("Ding Dong")
>
> A friend of mine was just raving about this (in writing) the other
> day. So now I'm curious. Tell us more?
Nellie McKay is a 22-year-old Scots-American singer/songwriter who
started in the cabaret scene in New York. Actually, the press kit for
her album originally claimed that she was 19 -- I had a moderately
public debate elsewhere with the journalist who "broke the story" that
McKay was lying about her age a few months ago; she seemed to feel
that this was a scandal on the level of Abu Ghraib, and literally said
that it meant she couldn't enjoy McKay's album anymore because she
thought it was now tainted by dishonesty. I gently broke it to her
that Bob Dylan was really a middle-class Jewish kid from Hibbing,
Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman, and that Jack White's real name was
John Gillis and that he wasn't really Meg White's brother, but her
ex-husband. While I agree that it's slightly disturbing that a
singer/songwriter who's already 13 years younger than me would shave
three years off her age, pop music is filled with people who lie in
their bios.
GET AWAY FROM ME is her major-label debut, following a self-titled and
self-released record that was #5 on my 2003 list. (Auditeer -- now
former, I believe -- Deb Albericci is the person who hipped me to her
early.) My fear when I found out that she was signed to a major had
been that Columbia was going to try to mold her into being the new
Norah Jones, but when the album came out with a title that -- despite
McKay's protestations to the contrary -- clearly seems to be a parody
of Jones' COME AWAY WITH ME, I relaxed on that. There are points of
comparison to Norah Jones: Nellie McKay is young, and female, and she
plays the piano, and she's really really cute, and there are jazz and
cabaret influences in her music.
BUT, while Jones' music is almost painfully earnest, Nellie McKay is a
world-class smart-ass. A much better point of comparison would be
Randy Newman, although McKay doesn't often sing "in character" the way
Newman does. (Although she does on "Ding Dong," my favorite song on
the album, where the singer is drawn into a lifelong downward spiral
of alcoholism and depression because her cat died; this song pulls off
the exceedingly difficult trick of being very funny and quite sad at
the same time.) Even the relatively straightforward songs on the
album, like the absolutely lovely "I Wanna Get Married," have a few
snarky lines, and most of my favorites are downright cutting: the most
Norah-like song on the album, "Really," is a gorgeous little ballad
for jazz trio plus trumpet, and it sounds like the ultimate Starbucks
music until you notice that the lyrics are a woman insincerely
apologizing to someone, saying that while she knows she's supposed to
care about him and his problems, she really just can't be arsed to.
For my money, Nellie McKay might well be the best lyricist in pop
music right now.
Musically, besides the Jones and Newman references, there's a huge
helping of IMPERIAL BEDROOM (as on that album, Geoff Emerick produced
this, at Abbey Road) and the rest of Elvis Costello's catalogue, a lot
of Kirsty MacColl (McKay has a similar fondness for Latin music, which
shows up in songs like the slightly Brazilian "Suitcase Song" and
"Respectable"), and a bit of the fondly-remembered (by me, anyway)
Suddenly, Tammy! on the more indiepop-oriented songs like "Inner
Peace" and "Toto Dies." Rather than point out any of these
similarities, Columbia chose to promote the album with a line like
"Doris Day meets Eminem," which only means that Nellie McKay favors
'50s-inspired clothing (she looks a bit like Renee Zellweger in DOWN
WITH LOVE -- have I mentioned that she's really really cute?) and
likes to swear. So it's really no wonder that the album didn't really
sell very well.
> So I went to Amazon to check out Nellie McKay-- double album for
> $8.99, hard to pass up-- and under the place where they tell you
> what other albums customers of this one bought, what should I see
> byut Franz Ferdinand? Stewart, just how many copies of these albums
> have you bought?
Can't be blamed for the FF, but as it happens, three different members
of my family were given copies of GET AWAY FROM ME as part of their
Christmas present, and I did get them from Amazon!
S
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