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City Morning Song

by

Sarah Shannon

 
City Morning Song
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Avg: 3.5 (25 ratings)

  • We Say...

    It’s not too hard to believe the jump from the indie-rawk salt mines to the Bacharach-inspired pop that Sarah Shannon made after the break-up of Velocity Girl. Shannon’s vocals always stood out among the mumblers and the yelpers of the Malkmus generation for their amazing clarity. On City Morning Song, her second solo album, Shannon continues down the track laid down by its predecessor. It’s a collection of wistful and literate pop music that hews closely to traditional pop forms for its structure. Economical is the best way to describe it: Shannon’s backing never finds itself at a loss for what it’s supposed to be doing, echoing the confidence that Shannon exudes throughout. It’s been five years since we’ve heard from her, but City Morning Song was well worth the wait.

  • They Say...

    Former Velocity Girl singer Sarah Shannon picks up her sporadic solo career with her second full-length. A huge improvement over 2002's spotty self-titled effort, City Morning Song is easily Shannon's most appealing record since Velocity Girl's Copacetic nearly a decade and a half before. The richly textured arrangements include strings and Burt Bacharach-style touches like muted trumpets and the major-seventh piano chords on the sweet and creamy ballad closer, "All We Will Be," but for all of the deliberate echoes of great, mature pop records of the past (Tapestry, Dusty in Memphis, Fleetwood Mac), this is no mere retro affair, nor is it loungey kitsch. Shannon is a technically better singer now than she was during VG's ultra-indie early days, and her lyrical concerns are more mature as well; even the one song that sounds like it could have appeared on a Velocity Girl record, the urgent and guitar-driven "Watch Over You," sounds more like the musings of a mother than a girlfriend. City Morning Song is a delightful record with a carefully detailed sound that feels like it took most of the five years since Shannon's last album, but with the crisp poppy immediacy of Velocity Girl's greatest singles. It could well be her best album ever.

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