Tracks: I'm A Fool to Want You//For Heaven's Sake//You Don't Know What Love Is//I Get Along Without You Very Well//For All We Know//Violets for Your Furs//You've Changed//It's Easy to Remember//But Beautiful//Glad to Be Unhappy//I'll Be Around//The End of a Love Affair
Review:
I’m tempted, rather than reviewing Lady in Satin, to instead quote a poster on Amazon who states that this album “appeals only to voyeurs of human tragedy and misery”. That may be a bit harsh, but it does sum up a lot of the problems I have both with this album and with many a consumer’s approach to art. You see, this is an album built around self-pity, and sold to people who care less about the music coming out of their speakers than the biographies of the musicians. Do people even talk about Billie Holiday's music anymore? Lady in Satin is an emotional rather than a musical experience, but as a person with little to no emotional investment in Holiday I am instead left with what is at best a fair-to-mediocre bit of orchestral pop.
So, let’s get down to specifics. At this point Billie Holiday’s voice was more or less fucked. It’s there for all to see. She keeps a level of control in her vocals which is impressive when taken in contrast with how raspy they sound, but that said, half the time they don’t even manage to stay in tune. In one instance she even resolves the song on the wrong note. But, I think we can blame this at least in part on the stunningly ill-conceived orchestral backing. It’s big. It’s really big, so big that half the time the instruments are so loud that they drown out Holiday’s voice, and it’s almost nothing but strings and big “woo-ooing” choirs of angels. Now, I actually happen to like big, sappy arrangements with woo-ooing choirs of angels, but they’d be out of place on a Minor Threat album and they’re out of place here.
This really is the crux of the problem. Holiday’s voice had been ravaged by drugs, alcohol and smoking, but it still had a certain slow flexibility and a heart-felt quality that would have worked marvellously with a smaller, les flamboyantly cheery band. While it must have sounded hideous and terrifying in 1958, fifty years of Punk music and Tom Waits albums have given us a world where the charms of such things can be a little better appreciate. I don’t see why Columbia didn’t give her the sort of spare treatment that had served her well previously. I guess they must have decided to try and push her as a slick pop singer and buried her vocals under the arrangements to distract people. Well, that’s all well and good, but it didn’t work. Ray Ellis’ arrangements are for the better part astonishingly tedious. So much is going on, with the warm-toned trumpet solos and swooping cellos and harps, and yet rather than become compelling the instruments instead weave together like the fibres of one big bundle of cotton wool. I tried listening through this twice and both times I almost fell asleep.
By this point you can probably tell that I don’t agree with the general assessment that this album is difficult to listen to. If this were a gut-wrenching emotional roller coaster I'd actually like it, but from poor song choices to bad performances, it’s not anywhere near challenging enough.
Ok, so now that I’ve finished savaging the thing I can tell you what I like about it. And I do like a few things. This isn’t an awful album, by any means. It’s never less than pleasant, and in a few songs everything comes together to even become down-right interesting. So! If you want to spare yourself a lot of trouble, and having to sit through the mumbled tedium of “Violets for Your Furs”, then you could do worse than pick-up “I’m a Fool to Want You”, “Glad to Be Unhappy” and “The End of a Love Affair”. None of these songs are spectacular, but the first is still quite beautiful, in a simple and guileless way, while “The End of a Love Affair” is the closest thing to an emotionally genuine moment on the whole album. Who, after sitting through this whole bizarre mess, isn’t going to feel a bit when Holiday hisses out “so I smoke a little too much, and I joke a little too much, and the tunes I request are not always the best, but the ones where the trumpets blare”. It’s actually affecting, and it goes a long way towards salvaging the album from pointlessness.
Well, that’s about it, and I hope I’ve made my point. Billie Holiday as encapsulated on this album is certainly a very pathetic individual, but I am not going to give any album top marks just for “authenticity”. I’ve always been a cynical bastard – I’m the kind of guy who gets put-off by novels or films which are described as “powerful”. I find something repulsive in the way that Kurt Cobain can off himself and suddenly he’s no longer just a pretty good pop-rock composer, but instead a tragic genius whose work finds absolute vindication in the act of his death. To suffer is not noble. To withstand and overcome suffering is noble.
I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve seen too many people get caught-up in the beauty of their own demise, and wind-up fucking themselves completely as a consequence. Billie Holiday you were a fine singer but this is just not all that good an album, and no amount of sadness in your life is going to change that. The self-absorbed, self-pitying, self-destructive artist is a bullshit construct. We make fun of Doors fans for buying it, and it wouldn’t be fair to let you off on this count. If this really was your favourite album, then it was obviously for deeply personal reasons. I respect that. I respect the bad situation you found yourself in. But yeah. The album's not much chop.
5/10
Download: Billie Holiday - The End of a Love Affair MP3
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