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Songs of Mass Destruction
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| Part No: | B000UCEJEQ |
| Manufacturer: | Arista |
| MFG Part: | 886971526028 |
| Customer Rating: | 4.0 / 5.0 |
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Songs of Mass Destruction Annie Lennox Label: Arista Release Date: 10/2/2007 1 Dark Road - 3:47 2 Love Is Blind - 4:18 3 Smithereens - 5:17 4 Ghosts in My Machine - 3:30 5 Womankind - 4:28 6 Through the Glass Darkly - 3:29 7 Lost - 3:41 8 Coloured Bedspread - 4:31 9 Sing - 4:48 10 Big Sky - 4:02 11 Fingernail Moon - 5:04
Menacing as they sound, the songs of mass destruction gathered on Annie Lennox's fifth solo disc don't manage to so much as nick the gorgeous instrument she's built her career on. Weaving artfully as ever around the contours of songs that suggest the worst--Lennox is world-wise and therefore maybe inevitably world-weary--she imparts gravity and grace in a voice as cloudless and surface-smooth as just-brewed mint tea; from the tentative beginnings of the mournful "Dark Road" to the gospel-bottomed gorgeousness of "Ghosts in My Machine," she's in full command of her considerable vocal powers. And it's possible she's never used them to such moving effect on a single record. Earlier Lennox or Eurythmics albums might have succumbed here and there to slight-seeming experiments in style, but
Songs of Mass Destruction doesn't dilly-dally. All swerves, even playful ones (see "Love Is Blind" and "Coloured Bedspread," a synth-y song that wouldn't seem so out of place on a recent Madonna record), are on-message: "Womankind" busts wide open not only because it needs to (a voice this big can't be contained, it reminds us), but to demo empowerment, and the hopeful "Sing" signs off with a seconds-long African guest vocal. There's an upside to the destruction of cultural wellness that led Lennox to write this record, and it's artistic creation.
Songs of Mass Destruction is a sterling, rock-solid, expert example.
--Tammy La Gorce
| "Through the Glass Darkly". | 2010-06-08 | 4 / 5 |
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| Overall, this is her darkest and most expressive album. After the somewhat pedestrian Bare, something must have happened, because this lady is sad and angry. I would not expect that to translate well for her, but the results are stunning. The song "Through the Glass Darkly" features some of the most powerful and disturbingly beautiful vocals I have ever heard. "Sing" does get watered down with too many guest vocalists and loses focus, for me, but it's still very good. Keep them coming, Annie. |
| Still one of the best voices . . . | 2010-03-02 | 4 / 5 |
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Annie Lennox really has the formula down pat. Write your own songs, keep your style intact and sing within a range that makes each song a personal moment. I love the fact that she feels no need to release a new disc every 9 months and that she waits till she has the goods. Such a unique woman. It is difficult to imagine anyone else covering these songs. She knows herself and her music. I actually think that this may be her most consistent effort yet. "Dark Road" and especially "Lost" are easily my favorite tracks, with the latter bordering on classic. |
| Very mixed | 2010-02-25 | 3 / 5 |
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I have had this since it came out--and have come to truly enjoy some of it.
First off, three songs never made it passed half a dozen listenings: Love is Blind and Ghosts in My Machine immediately struck me as pretentiously produced and sung in a way that strained Annie's delightful voice. Their final effect was both strained and bland. Lost? Well, I found that to be too maudlin and mawkish by half. So--my sense of what were duds are out of the way.
Dark Road is gorgeously sung and handsomely produced. I find the interaction between Annie and the instrumentation to be well-nigh magical. I like that she's singing about that universal issue of how does the human get beyond him or her self and find an emotional home with others. Yes, I have something of a hard time identifying with her unrelenting depression, but this song works beautifully. Colored Bedspread is likewise magical--setting and jewel-like vocalization creating a wonder-filled whole. I'm a person who always has a song in his head, and of late it's been Through the Glass Darkly. What an amazing melody! Here too, the production supports her voice perfectly. When she sings the chorus, the bell-like synths vaguely remind me of the bell-like sounds in Pink Floyd's song Time (when the rhythm of that song is being set at around 1:20). This is a song about the experience of time, written to speak to her depression. I find it fascinating to hear a songwriter writing "to" their depression. Smithereens would round out my favorite four; it seems sweet and somehow compassionate. Big Sky is handsome--got some passion going on.
Sing is fine--not bad, not great. Fingernail Moon is odd--a lyrical setting and subject with a depressing overcast--I feel it doesn't work. Likewise, I feel her performance just doesn't work here. Womankind is a perfectly fine pop song. I was happy to hear Annie making that purr-bop sound that she made with Eurythmics.
This is a pop album--that's what Annie says she makes. One of the goals of pop is to create songs that get stuck in your head. If this album has created such songs for you, well then, it works as a pop album. I find Annie's strong suit of late has been melody. On Bare and here she does indeed dip into lyric clichés. However, the ones on Bare are quite unforgivable--glass half-full or half-empty? It STILL jars! Here the cliches are mild enough to have their misfortune fade. I wonder if she came into the studio with some worse ones, but Ballard confronted her on them. Maybe Lipson had become lazy? I found a lot of magic in Bare too, but this change of producer is most welcome as far as I'm concerned. Because my play counts got reset by an iTunes crash in 2008, I can't compare how much I listened to Bare songs with this newer album. |
| please destruct | 2010-01-08 | 2 / 5 |
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| I like her stuff a lot. But this is not my favorite cd of hers. |
| Don't Listen to This at Work! | 2009-10-22 | 5 / 5 |
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I took this CD to work to listen to, as I couldn't find the time to enjoy it at home. I put it on and went about my tasks. Within moments, I was so rapt in the sheer utter brilliance of this collection that I stopped working completely, unnoticed. Some time later my boss enters my office.
"Are you sick?" he asked. "Why aren't you working?"
It wasn't until he put his hand on my shoulder that I snapped out of the musical trance.
This CD is THAT powerful!! |
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