Earlier this decade, Leona Naess was chugging along with one high-grade (albeit under-appreciated) put out after another -- 2000's "Comatised," 2001's "I Tried to Rock You But You Only Roll," and 2003's "Leona Naess." Then in January of 2004, her father, Norwegian mountaineer and businessman Arne Naess, died in a climbing mishap in South Africa. His devastated daughter withdrew from music. Eventually she rediscovered her muse, and alongside manufacturer Sam Dixon, Naess burned-out two years putting together the abstruse altered "Thirteens." The story is stirring though not frightfully weighty, regard for the palpable feelings of the singer's loss.
There are direct traces of despondency in the apparitional endorsement voices of obliging opener "Ghosts in the Attic," and the sensitive resurfaces throughout "Thirteens," including within the bittersweet nostalgia of closer "On My Mind." However, Naess also musters two alluring and constitutional bacchanalia songs -- "Leave Our Boyfriends," featuring a festive group-sing-along, and "Lipstick," where she decides to, "wear a dress, the one that shows my legs." The maturing Naess, 34, has fastidious her mellifluous articulation and steered it lambently of pretense.
The deceptively lounge meander of "Shiny on the Inside," for instance, reflects deeper deliberateness when she melodically sings, "When you're old, describe me what they'll say," and the sashaying "Swing Gently" elicits feeling with, "I can't recite you that I won't offend you, but I pledge to try." Naess and Dixon subtly bring into being bewitchment with inventive and deceptively simple-sounding layers of instrumentation (including stings and horns) that elevate the arrangements beyond mundane pop/folk. Then she finishes it off with her dinghy make known and prudent lyrics, as on the repeated renounce of the caption of "Learning As We Go," which could help as the overall paper of the release.
Rating (five possible): 4-1/2 "LOVE, WAR AND THE GHOST OF WHITEY FORD," Everlast (Martyr Inc.) Rapper and singer/songwriter Erik Schrody took on the favour Everlast dream of before he proved to be a guide of resilience. Since then, he went through the advent and demise of the 1990s Irish-American the rag hoax House of Pain ("Jump Around"), suffered a near-fatal light upon with sincerity disease, and feuded with Eminem. Everlast failed as a soloist pre-House of Pain, yet rebounded after the group's plunge with 1998's "Whitey Ford Sings the Blues" ("What It's Like," "Ends") only to falter again with unaccompanied projects in 2000 and 2004.
The 39-year-old returns with "Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford," and he still has mass to command -- too much, really, as rereading weakens the 17-track project. Still, there's a gratuity of great songs buried in the unapt ones as the firm Everlast employs his surely soulful, guttural enunciate to fling out acid missives about war, empathize with the disabled masses, and pirouette through a limit of relation emotions. Even more than with his sometime work, the undisturbed boosts the raving with a grating combo of blues and dumbfound kicked up by heady beats and dominating bass that honorarium testimonial to his hip-hop background. However, Everlast is singing, not rapping, as he blasts blissfully unconscious Americans for living in "50 states of denial" on "Kill the Emperor," calls for change on "Stone in My Hand" and relays a soldier's throw of the dice on "Letters Home From the Garden of Stone" with, "We all rodomontade up on the same side, 'cause ain't none of us doing God's will.
" Meanwhile, his alliance of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" to a mottle of House of Pain is a surprising triumph. Yet as high as many cuts are, Everlast wears down his audience with a gorge of material, and his distinction time seems less about firmness than redundancy.
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