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By Donn Jehs | ||
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| Artist: | "JANIS IAN" |
| Title: | "HUNGER" |
| Label: | Windham Hill |
| Release Date: | 9/30/97 |
| Rating: |  |
| Born in 1951, "Janis Ian," like many of us, grew up in that
hippie world of "free love" and "peace," but even at
the age of 15 was able to stick a pin in the side of an uptight society
with her ballad of interracial love, "Society's Child." Looking
back at that time Janis jokingly says, "I made the right wing unhappy
singing about dating the wrong kind of people. I made the left wing unhappy
because I ended the relationship and made the folk world unhappy because
I used drums on the record!" It wasn't as humorous back then, but it
launched a career that spans thirty years, with Grammy nominations in all
four decades from the 60's to the 90's. Her first self-titled album came out in 1967 and garnered her the first of nine Grammy nominations. The seventies saw three albums, "Stars," "Between The Lines," and "Aftertones." The first gave us "Jesse" which Roberta Flack turned into a charttopper, the second produced "At Seventeen" and her first Grammy. The third gave us Janis in the company of Phoebe Snow and Odetta, a trio of critically acclaimed songbirds. As the eighties opened she scored with a disco hit "Fly Too High" from the Jodie Foster movie "Foxes," then virtually disappeared from the pop scene for nearly a decade beset by health and financial problems (due to corrupt business managers). In 1992 she started back, appearing on the soundtrack to John Mellencamp's film, "Falling From Grace," and a year later she came out with her first album in over a decade, the aptly titled "Breaking Silence," followed two years later by the album "Revenge" which was nominated as Pop Music album of the year at the Nashville Music awards. Her latest album came about after Windham Hill approached her about doing a piano duet. Janis suggested an album and WH jumped at the opportunity. "It's the first time in my entire life that a record company has treated me this way," says a delightfully surprised Ian. "They are not expecting me to be 19. They are not measuring my waistline. They are looking at 'Can she perform?' And, yes, that is something I really know how to do. I'm excited." And when you hear her latest album you will be also. "Actually," says Janis Ian with a chuckle, "I think one of the reasons musicians keep doing what they do and writers keep doing what they do, is that we are totally unsuited for anything else. We really are." Janis has returned with her most powerful album yet as she joins the Windham Hill label. "I called this record 'Hunger' because I felt that if there was one thing that carried through this whole album it was that," says Ian. "It was hunger. A number of my contemporaries don't have that any more. I am a writer and a performer. That is what I do. But I have never allowed myself to become bitter when times changed. I can't afford that; besides, I believe that bitterness kills art. That's probably why I still have my hunger, my creative drive." That may change when her fans get a taste of her latest work and begin feeding her a diet of greens (as in dollars). Like her new stablemate, Patty Larkin (see October issue) Janis is a wordsmith and a guitar player with emphasis on the player. Janis says, "I get told a lot, 'You play like a guy,' and I'm not quite sure I know what that means. I guess it's meant to be compliment." Believe me Janis - it is! There are a dozen cuts on this album and every one is worth listening to. From love ballads like "House Without a Heart," to social commentary in "Searching For America," each song is well crafted both musically and lyrically. The album opens with the cut "Honor Them All" that takes the 4th commandment and turns it into a expression of love for family and respect for each other. Singing soft and sweet, Janis pours a lot of feeling into this little opening track and sets the tone for all that is to follow. That feeling quickly changes in "The Dark Side of Town" as she oozes the anger of a woman done wrong with some lines that are masterful double entendres, "On the dark side of town/ Where some woman waits/ To worship your crown/ To burn at your stake." The hurt and anger show through a barely repressed hiss in the vocals. "Might As Well Be Monday" has a little calypso beat (or what we now call reggae) in tune with it's song about lonely weekends. This song has more instrumental variation than any cut on the album and gets your toes a tappin'. "Getting Over You" is a breakup song, and has echoes of "At Seventeen" in the vocal pacing and feeling. Her live performance of this song brought a hush to the house. "Searching For America" is a true folk tune - a commentary on the search for the American dream that brings people to our shores and it's tarnished reality. I found the lyrics of this song to be some of the best I've heard in years: "They herded us like so much meat up from the sewers to the street where concrete canyons stretched their walls so high it made us want to crawl past proverbs written on subway cars and in between the window bars We walked until the pavement bled and not a curse was left unsaid into a place that knows no spring where only steel and silver sing. They made us dance until we dropped and the music of jackhammers finally stopped." Such powerful imagery is the mark of the best troubadors, and when lines like these are delivered with the soft mournful feeling present in Janis' voice you are nearly brought to tears. I can imagine the impact of a video presentation of this particular song so vividly are the pictures drawn. The title cut "Hunger" follows, and is filled with the yearning of a lover and the husky breathful whisper that is at once lingering and anticipatory. Franz Kafka wrote a story called "Der Hunger Kunstler" (The Hunger Artist) a soul who fasted for a living but the title aptly decribes Janis and her work here. "Acousticville" opens with a little aside, an explanation for the inspiration for the song and a note of humor, then breaks into the one of the most enjoyable tunes on the album. Janis sounds amazingly like Mary Chapin Carpenter on her song "I Feel Lucky" (or rather the reverse) when she sings the line "welcome to Acousticville" a place where those famous blues singers have moved on to, including Jimi Hendrix, who is playing a Martin D-18, perhaps the one that Janis owned and which disappeared in 1972? Janis offers a reward, by the way, for the return of her treasured guitar #67053, no questions asked. But if she doesn't get it back I'm sure she hopes it may have found a good home in Acousticville. This is a tribute to her profession and those that have gone before her. The sixty bar guitar solo shows Janis is a "player." She shines, and live, this was a highlight of the show performed in Salt lake City this past April as it was when I saw her perform in Sarasota this past month. "There is a gulf that is getting wider and wider between black and white cultures in this country. It's very distressing. . .It's getting harder and harder to meet in the middle." says Janis, about her reason for writing "Black & White" in which she revisits the days of Freedom Marches and wonders where the spirit of Montgomery has gone to. This song along with "Searching for America" are the most thought-provoking cuts on the album. The next two cuts are like a matched, but separated, set of lovelorn souls. Even the titles "Empty" and "House Without A Heart'" are two sides of the same coin. For Janis love seems to be more deeply felt in the absence of its object and better song material too. This album is about hunger, whether for love or for art, and "Shadow" may be the best explanation for the existence of that hunger, that longing for something just a bit better. "I always wanted to be Picasso, that's the level I wanted to hit. But I always ended up feeling like Monet or Cezanne. I'm never gonna be Picasso. "Shadow" is about that feeling - "why can't I be that?" "Why can't I be the perfect wife?" "Why can't I be as good at anything as anyone else is?" You're just standing in their shadow. It's a lousy feeling." The album closes with another love lost ballad, "Getting Over You," something I will have a hard time doing when it comes to a voice as endearing as Janis Ian's. |
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