Love Love – Amy Macdonald
Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over – Amy Macdonald
One of my favorite records of this year isn’t even from this year. Somehow I totally missed Amy Macdonald’s most recent record, A Curious Thing, which actually came out way back in March of 2010. Macdonald is actually quite popular over in Europe, but doesn’t seem to have taken off in nearly the same way on this side of the pond. So despite the fact that I loved her debut, I just failed to notice this one getting released.
Her style is almost aggressively straightforward. These are simple songs about love and longing, clean guitar lines, verse/chorus/verse, etc. The big themes are love, wistful reminiscence, and wry concern for the inauthenticity of fame. None of which really pushes any boundaries. She does have a lovely voice, with a thick Celtic accent, which adds some nice flavor but doesn’t fundamentally alter things. The thing is, she just does the basic stuff so well that you can’t be bothered to worry about any lack of sophistication.
Things pick right up where they left off in 2007’s This Is the Life. “Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over” is a galloping guitar-driven love song, which is sold almost entirely by her vocal performance. “No Roots” is smoky and insistent – though the quiet intro drags on just a little bit. And “An Ordinary Life” takes what could be a very trite message (the decline of authenticity that seems inevitably accompany fame) and makes it seem significant. It’s not that she offers a radically new perspective or anything – more that she seems to call attention to all those elements of life that appear universal from the outside, but which are invariably experienced in their particularity from within.
My favorite example is “Love Love,” which to my ear is almost post-ironic. See, for example, lines like: “At night I sit and cry it seems / Wondering why love is not like my dreams / Wondering why I am still here all alone.” Taken literally, it’s almost too precious to handle. And yet, she plays it straight. Or rather, she plays it like someone who desperately WANTS to still believe in the dream. The sense of melancholy reaches its apotheosis as she sighs: “And at night I wish that you were there / Touching my face and stroking my hair / Telling me things, telling me stories / Telling me you love me in all my glory.” The snob will write it off, but would be absolutely wrong. It’s a very genuine moment because, rather than in spite, of its pomposity.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to jump completely into the breach in defense of this record. It’s simplicity is a major part of its charm, but it’s also a modest step back from Macdonald’s first record. That one combined this sense of passion and earnestness with a more tempered form of judgment. There’s nothing on this record that hits the pitch-perfect sense of awe you heard in “Barrowland Ballroom,” or anything that is so pure as her cover of “Caledonia.” And where the themes do match, there is something a bit more weighty about the older “Footballer’s Wife” which just doesn’t quite emerge from this record’s “An Ordinary Life.”
All that said, it’s still a mighty fine record. If it suffers marginally compared to her first one, it certainly is not a sophomore slump.
when i think of music i wish we’d get a hold of, i still think of her. sometimes i’m glad we haven’t and sometimes i wish somebody would suddenly surprise me and maybe play a track of hers on the radio. i have listened to the “a curious thing” album as well and i like it but i haven’t gotten a hold of it. it was a preview on an international flight i took and i enjoyed it very much. i love the first track especially. there’s something very vulnerable about her and i relate to it wholly. i was looking to play this track in full and found you through the hype machine.