Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Women are a mystery to most men. I've been kicking around now for a half-century and I understand a little more than a did ten years ago. One of the things I understand is that sometimes it's better just to say to hell with it and not bother.

I accordingly have never even really tried to understand the New Age movement. I have my theory, it having to do with boredom and life changes and such, but you probably don't want to hear it. I doubt that women in third world countries bother much with it; they're too busy trying to grow food and stay alive to be bored, yes indeedy. Nope, this seems to be a phenomenon of the Western woman. And woe be the man whose female companion starts dabbling in this. I've been luckier than most in the sense that I've yet to come home and find my wife sitting in the living room with her legs crossed, eyes closed, in the middle of a circle of candles, burning incense and chanting along to a CD like A WOMAN'S VOICE. In fact, as I was playing this collection of New Age sugar the Mrs. came downstairs to make sure that I hadn't freaked out. "Why are you listening to this crap?" she said, with a faint hint of alarm in her voice. "A review for AMZ," I replied. She nodded sagely, catching the same gleam in my eye that was last present when I put the live Judds' CD in the player, and left the room, no doubt to block her ears. I alas, was not so lucky.

A WOMAN'S VOICE is heralded as "A showcase of some of the finest female singers recording today." You're not gonna find Cassandra Wilson, or Julie Miller, or Lucinda Williams, or Bonnie Raitt on here, however. Nope, instead we have Pia and Sarah (not Norah) Jones and Juliana and Sarah Hopkins here, with music to bring peace to your soul, or to meditate by. Unfortunately, with most of this music, "Ummmmmm...." Will quickly turn into "Zzzzzzz..."

A quick scan of the titles here pretty much says it all. "Woman Wisdom," "Free Yourself," "Fly Through the Skies," and the profoundly wretched "Honor the Earth as your Mother" are representative of what is going down here (and I don't say that in the scatological sense). Lots of breathy vocals, rhythmic chanting, and synthesized bells are the order of the day. There are only two tracks that are remotely interesting. One is "Shyam" by Pia, which, at least on the surface deals with the real world concern of a woman who has left her lover and wants to come back. IF he's smart, he had changed the locks, called his travel agent, and found a new girlfriend to take to Tahiti for an extended vacation. "Flaming Star" by Sally Oldfield is also included here, and stands out among the other tracks as the result of it's compositional and production values. Otherwise, however, the selection here is tedious to a fault. The liner notes purport that "(T)his is an album that you will want to play over and over again." Actually, it sounds as if you're playing it over and over again the first time through. At a little less than 67 minutes long, it transcends time, making an hour seem like a week.

A WOMAN'S VOICE is undoubtedly going to be hot stuff at the weekly meeting of the Gaea committee at the local Unitarian Universalist church, but for those of us in the real world, it's not happening. It's going to take a week of Rob Zombie at earbleed volume to purge this one out of my system.