Sometimes I just don’t get you people. Maybe it was the whole
\nmillennium thing distracting everybody or something. Maybe it was
\ncriminally poor promotion by the labels involved. But the year 2000
\nprobably set a modern record for “Most Really Good Albums That
\nHardly Anybody Bought”. In a just universe, bestsellers that year
\nwould have included The Jayhawks’
\nSmile<\/i>, Fastball’s
\nThe Harsh Light of Day<\/i>, and this, Shawn Mullins’ sophomore
\ntry as a major-label bonus baby.<\/p>\n
The Mullins backstory is the stuff of legend. Ten years of
\ncoffeehouse gigs and self-published acoustic CDs led up to Mullins’
\n1998 indie album
\nSoul’s Core<\/i>. Then one day some bright fellow at a big
\nAtlanta station took a chance on the local guy and threw “Lullaby”
\non the playlist. Boom: regional hit single, major label signing,
\nnational hit, platinum album, etc., etc.<\/p>\n
The inevitable big-budget follow-up album, however, may have
\nbeen doomed from the start by short-sighted label execs. Seamless
\nas
\nBeneath The Velvet Sun<\/i> might appear on first listen, it’s
\nactually a two-part affair. The nine-song core of the album was
\nrecorded in Atlanta and co-produced by Mullins and Anthony J.
\nResta. It’s a restless affair, veering from the edgy, literate folk
\nthat had been Mullins’ trademark as an undiscovered regional artist
\n(“Yellow Dog Song”) to airy, atmospheric rock (“North On 95,”
\n“Santa Fe”) to a soaring piano-and-strings ballad co-written with
\nhis wife (“We Run”). The highlight of this set is a funked-up,
\ntemperature-heightening duet between Mullins and very special guest
\nShelby Lynne on the grinding, memorable “I Know.”<\/p>\n
The first four songs, however, were apparently recorded after
\nColumbia decided they didn’t hear a single (read: a “Lullaby”
\nclone) among Mullins’ initial set. So, they dragged him out to LA
\nto record a few follow-up tracks with Julian Raymond, hit-making
\nproducer for, ironically enough, Fastball. The results were strong,
\nincluding a pair of highly melodic pop-rock tunes (the clever
\n“Amy’s Eyes” and the unremarkable yet pretty “Everywhere I Go”) and
\n– hey, folks, there it is – a name-dropping,
\nspoken-verse-over-a-hip-hop-beat, “Lullaby”-like piece of Mullins
\nmagic called “Up All Night.” It was the perfect follow-up to
\n“Lullaby” – so, naturally, the label chose “Everywhere I Go” as the
\nfirst single. (As Casey Stengel famously said, “Doesn’t anybody
\nknow how to play this here game?”)<\/p>\n
Ironically, the fourth song of the Raymond set, and quite
\npossibly the best on the album, is a stirring, largely acoustic
\nanthem to personal integrity called “Something To Believe In.” The
\nfact that it was recorded under pressure from the label to conform
\nto their creative tastes is about as close to perfect irony as
\nyou’re likely to encounter in your local record store, and
\ndoubtless lost on those whom you suspect it was aimed at.<\/p>\n
But I’ve dwelled too long already on the circumstances
\nsurrounding this ill-fated album. The essential information here is
\nthis: Shawn Mullins has a remarkable voice equally capable of
\nrumbly, rough-edged lows and billowing high notes; a terrific ear
\nfor melody; and a fiction writer’s touch with character details.
\nThis is a superb set of songs that is compromised only by Mullins’
\napparent desire to please the people who took his gentle,
\nidiosyncratic music and tried to make a quick buck off it. Don’t
\nhold against him the fact that the label chose for the first single
\nthe only somewhat weightless, predictable song on the entire album.
\nThere’s a ton of good music on here that’s worthwhile either for
\nthe long-time Mullins fan or the casual listener intrigued by
\nartfully conceived, highly melodic singer-songwriter material.<\/p>\n
Like the Jayhawks, like Fastball, Mullins found himself in 2002
\nonce again without major-label backing. In the case of Fastball,
\nthe result has been a premature breakup. The Jayhawks have
\nsoldiered on at half-strength, working as a largely acoustic trio.
\nThe answer has been simpler for Mullins, the once-and-again
\ntroubadour. He simply shrugged off the disappointing sales of this
\nalbum, continued performing solo and producing others’ albums, and
\nis now hard at work on a fascinating collaboration with fellow
\noutside-the-mainstream songsmiths Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge.
\nHint: buy their album. The majors probably won’t touch it, which
\nwill be your first clue that it’s really good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":26285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6728],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37510","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-shawn-mullins","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37510","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37510"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}