Eva Cassidy – Simply Eva [Audio CD]

Description

The eighth posthumous album from the US singer-songwriter who came to prominence after her version of ‘Over the Rainbow’ was played on BBC Radio 2. The collection comprises 12 tracks, including ‘Songbird’, ‘Kathy’s Song’, ‘Time After Time’, ‘True Colors’ and many more. Review It was in 2000 that Radio 2 breakfast presenter Terry Wogan first started playing tracks by a totally obscure American singer whod died four years earlier. The clarity of her folksy voice applied to a broad array of styles and engaging versions of some classic material caused a sensation, triggering an amazing bitter-sweet success story that eventually resulted in three chart-topping albums, a number one single and over eight million sales. Seemingly everything she ever recorded was re-released and the story of a life so cruelly curtailed by cancer at 33 even became a best-selling book. Just when you thought there couldnt possibly by any undiscovered Cassidy material left to trawl, the 10th anniversary of her Songbird compilation topping the UK album chart is marked by a new collection of previously unreleased tracks which places her in a fresh context. All but one of the songs included have surfaced previously, but the difference here is that the only accompaniment comes from Cassidys own gentle guitar work on an entirely solo collection. In this pure, exposed state you do get an alternative handle on an artist whose other releases have sometimes too easily portrayed her at the bland end of MOR. Her wailing, slowed-down interpretation of San Francisco Bay Blues the one track we havent heard her sing before puts a new light not only on her but Jesse Fullers song itself. Her soulful arrangement of Over the Rainbow is a revelation, too radically different to her other versions, it turns the old Judy Garland warhorse into a bluesy distress call. Desultory versions of Paul Simons Kathys Song and two Cyndi Lauper hits, Time After Time and True Colours, are less successful; but when she really pours herself into a lyric, as on People Get Ready and Autumn Leaves, we get a measure of her true standard and sadly unfulfilled potential as a singer. The words of Sandy Dennys Who Knows Where the Time Goes have scarcely sounded more poignant given the tragedy awaiting her, while the unaccompanied I Know You By Heart, which ends the album, carries enduring emotional impact.