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Mindy Smith
One Moment More
label: Vanguard
released: 01.27.04
our score: 3.0 out of 5.0
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After
hearing the way Mindy Smith knocked “Jolene” out of
the park on the Just Because I’m a Woman comp,
I (and a lot of people in the country music industry) got all
geeked to hear what Smith would do on her first solo album. She
seemed like the whole package: young! cool! pretty! new! actually
writing her own songs on her first record!
And
if the whole thing was like the first song on One Moment More,
we’d be in business. It’s a blues/gospel/country tune
called “Come to Jesus”—hey, wait! where are
you going?! Well, if the idea of that makes you extremely dubious,
then screw you, good music can come from everywhere. Not only
does this song manage to rock., there’s even a temporary
glimpse of skepticism right in the middle, where it sounds
like maybe she quotes Jesus as saying something like “I
have come with a lie to set you free.” Is this some kind
of code casting doubt on the rest of the song? It certainly makes
it more interesting…but it doesn’t matter anyway,
because the song is really all about the punch of the electric
and slide guitars anyway.
After that, though, the record turns awfully
schizo as far as I’m concerned. “Falling” and
“Raggedy Ann” are dull folk-rock things, full of sappy
lines and soggy thinking. I’ve heard that the latter is
based on her own difficult childhood before she was adopted, but
it still doesn’t seem convincing in the least; lines like
“All the busy people keep walking away / Like they can’t
see me / Or anything” try for pathos, miss, and go straight
for bathos.
Smith is much more effective when she goes
for the throat. “Train Song” regains some country
flavor, managing to sound like a hillbilly ballad (chorus: “Is
my sweet man on that train?”) with an Aimee Mann middle
eight. “Hard to Know” lets the E-bow guitar blast
on the verses and chugs along hard on the chorus, very sinister
and, yeah, Mann-like vocal tone. And “Fighting For It All”
is folky-sounding but has a hard edge to it nonetheless: “I
know I’m not that pretty / I’m only average smart
/ With an overwhelming uncanny need / Just to need to survive”.
But when she’s not rocking, Smith
loses that edge, and the songs get so boring that it’s hard
to hear the cool stuff. There is a soft slow yucky song called
“Angel Doves” on this record, and it is so sickeningly
mellow and easy-to-take and God-is-our-big-buddy that I want to
take back everything nice I said about “Come to Jesus.”
The song “Hurricane” fails to rock like one, the song
“It’s Amazing” isn’t. She makes it too
easy.
Mindy Smith hasn’t yet decided what
she wants to do. If she wants to be country, she could do that
well. If she wants to be rock, ditto. If she wanted to do devotional
music, that would be cool (except she wouldn’t be able to
say “shit” on a Christian record). And she could even
do folk music well, although I wouldn’t listen to it. But
this kind of waffling is just indecisive, and confusing, and boring.
Pleasant enough, but boring.
26-Jan-2004
10:55 AM
If you
liked One Moment More...
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Tracklist:
1.
Come To Jesus
2. Falling
3. Raggedy Ann
4. Fighting For It All
5. Train Song
6. It's Amazing
7. Angel Doves
8. Down In Flames
9. Hurricane
10. Hard To Know
11. One Moment More
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