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Label: Vanguard
Sound/Style: Classic pop-influenced spin on contemporary folk and country
By Steve Morley
The music of Kim Richey reveals the kind of workmanship that Nashville tunesmiths are noted for, and singers including Trisha Yearwood and Terri Clark have successfully run her songs up the country charts. But Richey’s peculiar brand of creativity isn’t the kind that easily conforms to mainstream standards, leaving her to court a more select audience that favors left-of-center artists like Shelby Lynne or Shawn Colvin. Chinese Boxes is the second of Richey’s five records to be cut in London with an English producer. Given her propensity for Big Ben and British pop, her choice of producer Giles Martin—the son of Beatles producer Sir George—is an inspired one.
The opening cut, "Jack and Jill," has an imaginative, Beatlesque arrangement that includes flutes, harpsichord and a whistled interlude. Those Crayola-tone colors are made all the more striking by the ill-fated lovers whose story they adorn. This is a Kim Richey trademark—lyrics that are cast into unlikely musical settings, creating curiously skewed messages. Here, her sparkling wordplay sketches out a shallow romantic junket, while the song’s absent-minded sway foreshadows the cluelessness of the parties involved: "He held her hand like it was a mystery/ One he couldn’t quite believe was walking with him/ They were high up on a hill/ With something to say and daylight to kill/ Time slipped away, the way that it will…"
While Richey’s narrative approach takes no sides, she quietly details the futility of uncommitted and naive relationships. The track also establishes a theme that unifies the entire album: the importance of authentic communication and its rarity in contemporary culture. The most maddening examples of the failure to communicate are offered on "I Will Follow" and "Chinese Boxes," both of which depict mischievous cat-and-mouse games that make the songs’ objects of desire impossible to nail down.
Richey’s lyric on "Drift" finds her offering the kind of unspoken consolation that can only be experienced between intimate friends, but more often she tries to stimulate disclosure from companions whose silence has already suggested the departure she secretly fears. Richey gets maximum mileage from that bittersweet scenario on "Another Day" by extending genuine compassion to the tight-lipped object of her attention: "You can come a little closer/ Don’t be afraid to speak your mind/ Don’t let the silence come between us/ And I promise to repay in kind/ On the tip of your tongue/ Are all the words you never say/ Don’t let another day go by."
"Something to Say" strikes a wistful chord as it searches for a moment of clarity and a release from the failure to rise above personal disarray. The song’s character seeks nothing short of revelation, which she dreams about passing along to others in the form of hope: "One day I’ll tie up all my loose ends/ Ring up my best friends/ And have something to say/ When I get my head around/ What it is that keeps me down/ Wouldn’t that be something, something to say."
If Richey’s worldview seems dour at times, she nonetheless aspires to create two-dimensional worlds where, if real connections can’t be made, their absence can be felt. Richey’s refusal to serve ear candy, while contrary to her pop sensibilities, makes Chinese Boxes a sweet-and-sour concoction for discriminating tastes.
Audio Clips
"Jack and Jill"
"Chinese Boxes"
"Drift"
"The Absence of Your Company"
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