Carolyn Wonderland - 2 albums: Peace Meal / Miss Understood

Album: Peace Meal
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:13
Size: 115.0 MB
Styles: Country blues
Year: 2011
Art: Front

[4:00] 1. What Good Can Drinkin' Do
[3:55] 2. Victory Of Flying
[3:37] 3. Only God Knows When
[3:59] 4. St. Marks
[7:03] 5. Golden Stairs
[2:41] 6. Dust My Broom
[4:55] 7. I Can Tell
[3:15] 8. Usurper
[3:21] 9. No Exception
[5:38] 10. Meet Me In The Morning
[3:55] 11. Two Trains
[3:48] 12. Shine On

To her credit, Carolyn Wonderland makes no bones about the Janis Joplin comparisons that, somewhat accurately, describe her whiskey-soaked voice and tough blues/soul musical palette. In fact, this album's opening track is a relatively obscure Joplin cover of "What Good Can Drinkin' Do" that she delivers with requisite bad girl swagger. Well known for her exciting live show, Wonderland has had less success capturing that edge on album. But a combination of producers including Asleep at the Wheel's Ray Benson, Dylan sideman Larry Campbell, and even ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith successfully frame the Texas native's songs in a raw, rootsy, but professionally recorded environment that lets her vocals shine and gives her band room to kick out the jams on blues, R&B, New Orleans funk, swamp rock, and the righteous gospel that's at the heart of her multiple influences. The tracks are divided equally between covers and Wonderland originals, thereby displaying both her songwriting and interpretive chops. She can wail with the best of them, but it's her control on tunes such as "Usurper," with its thumping drums, and the closing acoustic country of "Shine On," the album's most reserved moment, that shows the restraint of a great singer. She brings churchy soul to her own "St. Marks," an easygoing midtempo rocker that sounds like an old soul cover, and tears it up on blues classics such as Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" and "Two Trains," applying the latter's words to the standard "You Don't Love Me" riff. She's obviously on fire performing straight-ahead blues, her band is rocking, and the arrangement balances her in-your-face blast with a far more subtle style. It's that ability to rein in her brassy bellow, especially on a fiery gospel take of Vince Welnick/Robert Hunter's "Golden Stairs" (a cool, under-the-radar find), that makes her such a formidable presence and provides this album the dynamics of style and mood that make it a diverse yet perfect example of what Wonderland does best. ~Hal Horowitz

Peace Meal mc
Peace Meal zippy

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Album: Miss Understood
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 43:51
Size: 100.4 MB
Styles: Rockin blues
Year: 2008
Art: Front

[3:26] 1. Misunderstood
[3:44] 2. I Found The Lions
[4:24] 3. Bad Girl Blues
[3:56] 4. Walk On
[2:56] 5. Still Alive And Well
[2:55] 6. Long Way To Go
[3:45] 7. I Don't Want To Fall For You
[3:29] 8. Trouble In The City
[3:14] 9. Throw My Love
[3:35] 10. I Live Alone With Someone
[3:55] 11. The Farmer Song
[4:27] 12. Feed Me To The Lions

On her seventh album, Texas blues singer/guitarist Carolyn Wonderland teams with Ray Benson, leader of Asleep at the Wheel, who serves as her producer, co-writer on two songs, backup guitarist, and the head of her record label, Bismeaux Productions. Benson seems to have just let Wonderland be herself, and that results in a varied collection that begins by emphasizing her blues-rock bona fides on the lap steel workout "Misunderstood" and ends with the ballad "Feed Me to the Lions," on which she is accompanied by the Tosca String Quartet. In between, there is plenty of room for her tasty, sometimes ferocious guitar playing on both originals and such covers as a version of the Johnny Winter signature song "Still Alive and Well." She has a powerful, rhythmic voice, her phrasing, if not her timbre, sometimes recalling Janis Joplin's, perhaps because they come from the same part of the world. While the rockers clearly provide a comfort zone for her, Wonderland seems equally at home on calmer material, notably the slow blues "Bad Girl Blues" and "I Don't Want to Fall for You," which sounds like a lost song from the days of Tin Pan Alley. Such versatility serves her well and only whets the appetite for her next guitar solo. ~William Ruhlmann

Miss Understood mc
Miss Understood zippy

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