Doing this job has been a re-education in the world of rhythm
\n& blues for me. I’ve discovered some wonderful music that I
\nmissed growing up, as well as some songs from my childhood that I
\nhaven’t heard for years… some of which I could have easily
\nforgotten about and been just as happy.<\/p>\n
But there have also been discoveries of artists who I think I
\nknew a little something about as I’ve listened to more music the
\nolder I’ve gotten. Such is the case with Jean Carne, whose greatest
\nhits disc
\nCloser Than Close: The Best Of Jean Carne<\/i> came out earlier
\nthis year. While Carne seems to dish up typical r&b of the time
\n– not necessarily bad, just standard fare – some of her songs are
\nbound to rings bells of recognition in your mind.<\/p>\n
I dare say that Carne was typical of the genre because she
\ndoesn’t really have any characteristics to her music that set her
\napart from others of the time. She doesn’t try to show off a
\nmulti-octave range, she doesn’t break out the funk, she doesn’t get
\ntoo seductive in the music. No, she chooses to walk a straight path
\nright down the middle of the r&b road – and by no means am I
\nsaying that’s a bad thing.<\/p>\n
In fact, the only thing about Carne’s music that does set her
\napart was the minor row she kicked up with her song “There’s A
\nShortage Of Good Men” – a song she didn’t even
\nwrite<\/i> but took the heat for. Nowadays, this track is prety
\ntame, but the concept caused the track to lose a lot of airplay.
\nCarne also planted a few bees in people’s bonnets with “Free Love,”
\na song about an unwed mother whose message many people seemed to
\nmisunderstand. (It’s a funny thing, but the “controversial” tracks
\nturn out to be some of the best music on this disc.)<\/p>\n
The bells of recognition went off for me on the song “Sweet And
\nWonderful,” a song I could swear I’ve heard before giving this disc
\nrepeated listens. I don’t know what it is about this particular
\ntrack, but I found myself going back to it again and again. Maybe
\nit’s the peppy rhythm track, maybe it’s Carne’s flawless delivery
\n(can anyone tell me who the male vocal accompanying Carne on this
\nsong is?)… I just love it.<\/p>\n
Equally as pleasant are the tracks “I’m Back For More,” a duet
\nwith Al Johnson, “Love Don’t Love Nobody” and her cover of “If You
\nDon’t Know Me By Now,” a song that I don’t think I’ve heard a bad
\nversion of yet. With songs like these, I have to wonder why more
\npeople don’t know about Carne’s work.<\/p>\n
But there is some rather average fare on this disc as well.
\nTracks like “Was That All There Was,” “Completeness,” “Closer Than
\nClose” and “Together Once Again” just fail to light the fires like
\nthe other mentioned tracks do. It’s not that these are bad songs;
\nrather, it’s just that they’re nothing special. Indeed,
\nCloser Than Close: The Best Of Jean Carne<\/i> turns out to be a
\nbit of a musical rollercoaster.<\/p>\n
Carne’s output shows that she’s definitely worthy of your
\nattention, if only to get yourself re-acquainted with her work. But
\nthis disc is occasionally difficult to get through, especially when
\nthe songwriting quality dips compared to the superior tracks.
\nCloser Than Close: The Best Of Jean Carne<\/i> is worth checking
\nout, even if all you want to do is get her classic tracks isolated
\non one disc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6199],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36385","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jean-carne","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36385"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36385"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}