Some CDs sneak up on you. This one kicks you in the teeth from
\nthe first moment it hits the laser. The opening bars of “Northern
\nGirl” was my first introduction to Cheryl Wheeler’s shatteringly
\nlovely voice, and it was like a shot of whisky; rich, complex, with
\novertones that defied analysis at the first hearing. I’ve listened
\nto
\nDifferent Stripe<\/i>, her first greatest hits CD, pretty much
\nconstantly since then, and I still think I haven’t heard it all —
\nbut the discovery’s been exhilarating, and I think I can safely say
\nthis woman is brilliant.<\/p>\n
She’s a storyteller, a musician’s musician; she’s never had a
\nstraight job, but rather has remained fully immersed in her
\nmusicianship. Her concerts are legendary; apparently her
\nbetween-patter is funnier than sin. I don’t know about that; I do
\nknow the woman can sing like an angel and writes lyrics that bite
\nlike the devil.<\/p>\n
The musicianship on
\nDifferent Stripe<\/i> is excellent; specific moments like the
\nviolin on “Arrow” (performed by fiddle great Mark O’Connor) and the
\nheartbreaking piano intro on “Moonlight And Roses” set the
\nessential simplicity of Wheeler’s voice off perfectly. Production
\nand engineering are excellent, despite disparate source tapes; some
\nof these cuts are from a Capitol Records release in 1991 that was
\nimmediately dropped so the label could focus on promoting Garth
\n(*yecch*) Brooks. (That’s not to say Garth Brooks is bad. He’s not,
\nnecessarily, but did the world really NEED another Garth Brooks
\nrecord more than it needed Cheryl Wheeler?)<\/p>\n
There are so many good tracks on this CD that I have no idea
\nwhat to highlight — except one track. See, everyone has a song or
\ntwo that symbolizes a point in their past — and at one point in my
\npast my ‘signature song’ was “Addicted,” performed by Dan Seals
\n(who is, in my opinion, one of the better country music artists of
\nthe last twenty years). Well, damned if Cheryl Wheeler didn’t write
\n“Addicted,” and this CD includes her original version. Yep. Still
\nmeans something, some fifteen years later. If that doesn’t explain
\nwhy this works, you’ve either never been in love or you’re
\nbrain-dead.<\/p>\n
Look, I can sit here and babble about this CD all day, and I
\ncan’t find a better way to summarize it than this: Cheryl Wheeler
\nis brilliant,
\nDifferent Stripe<\/i> is brilliant, you should go buy it and
\nsupport yet another real musician who’s fallen through the
\nbig-label cracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6820],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-37555","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-cheryl-wheeler","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37555","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37555"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}