Customer Reviews

Captain Swing

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Michelle Shocked certainly shocked a lot of fans with this tribute to swing music. While some think her vocal style doesn't fit swing, it's a testament to her voice that she sounds just great here--even if you prefer her on country/folky stuff more than on swing, you have to admit that she sounds wonderful and her joy in the music comes across amply.

"God is a Real Estate Developer" is a weirdly titled swing tune that opens the album, and things get even stranger with "On the Greener Side," a samba-influenced tune that somehow reminds me of Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia" with its lickety-split beat and hummability. Strange, yes, but this is still great stuff! On "Silent Ways" Shocked harkens back to her bluegrassy roots with a sly, witty song about sex--"loving in a silent way" as opposed to the words her lover pleads for. Shocked manages to convey a smile at her lyrics almost better than any other singer out there today:

"When you asked me,
'Michelle, do you love me?'
I didn't know what to say
So I just laid down beside you and
I loved you in a silent way.
And when you asked me to forgive you
For all your cheating days
I just laid down beside you and
Forgave you in a silent way.
Silence is golden
Words are made of lead
And in the alchemy of love
Some things are better left unsaid."

"Streetcorner Ambassador" ROCKS with a propulsive beat and Shocked's incisive portrait of what goes on in the streets near her apartment. "Too Little Too Late" provides an aural impression of Shocked lolling atop an upright piano in the middle of a saloon, flicking her feather boa back and forth lazily as she sings.

Once again, Shocked includes the lyrics for only some of the songs, not all of them--odd, but what the heck, if you don't mind that, this is a wonderfully strong album and a departure for Shocked. Good for her for having the strength of her convictions to try something a little offbeat.

As music lovers, we all have certain styles or similarities that mark our musical tastes. This was illustrated for me recently when my friend Steve made me a mixed CD that was heavy on multi-part harmony, something I'm not sure Steve even realized when he was selecting favorites to include, but which makes sense as Steve himself is a bass in a local a cappella group called BlueLine. My wife, although she jokes that the only musical instrument she can play is the radio, tends to favor songs that feature a solo piano and even fell for my poor keyboard skills when we were courting. I personally love music with horns, possibly a result of my high school band days when I played both the baritone and trombone. While I like plenty of songs without a brass section, that sound will likely make me pay closer attention to it.

Not every song on Michelle Shocked's Captain Swing has horns, but those that do are my favorite moments on this album and also responsible for making this my favorite Shocked album, although I also quite like Short Sharp Shocked and Arkansas Traveler. The inclusion of a brass section also underscores how much of a metamorphoses Shocked went through on her first three albums, from the recorded-on-a-Walkman (and basically released without her permission) The Texas Campfire Tapes to this multitrack, multi-instrument album. That first album, where one can even sometimes hear crickets in the background, was just Shocked's voice and her guitar, recorded live during the Kerrville Folk Festival. Her second album didn't add much in the way of instruments, but Short Sharp Shocked was made in a studio with multiple takes that smoothed out imperfections while maintaining her intimate style. For Captain Swing, the pendulum had swung all the way over into lush production although not so much that it overshadows Shocked's clever songwriting, but does transform her at least somewhat from the doyenne of the piney woods past the "skateboarding punk rocker" into a folky k.d. lang-inspired torch singer.

The theme is swing and Shocked is catholic in how she applies it to her songs. She transforms her earlier composition, "(Don't You Mess With) My Little Sister," into a hard-rocking set piece of Bakersfield that wouldn't be out of place on a Dwight Yoakam album. "It Must Be Luff" comes straight out of a dance hall of Basin Street, New Orleans with its combination of tuba bass rhythym, slightly out-of-tune jangly piano, and slide-and-muted trombone. Shocked anticipated the big band revival with "God is a Real Estate Developer," "Too Little Too Late" and "Sleep Keeps Me Awake," while "On the Greener Side" and "Silent Ways" highlight the fast and slow moods of Texas swing. The cool later jazz stylings that combined Glenn Miller with Duke Ellington can be found in "The Cement Lament," with some of the best clarinets you'll ever hear in a rock song; "Streetcorner Ambassador" even makes a play for a modified Miles Davis BeBop groove with its muted trumpet solo and cool jazz rhythm. Even "Looks Like Mona Lisa," where the horns are replaced by a plaintive string part, has at its core a swing bass rhythm part.

The subject of the songs match her earlier albums, though: concerns about the homeless and the inner city, memories of growing up in small towns, and satirical takes on life. But more than anything, these songs have a sense of fun to them that was sometimes missing in those first two albums. They are fast and bouncy and funny at times, sometimes so much that you miss the serious message of some of the lyrics. Shocked duplicated some of this chemistry in her next album, Arkansas Traveller, although the musical theme there was less interesting to me as it was based on bluegrass instead of swing.

I had heard of Michelle Shocked but had never heard her until I heard a couple of cuts from this CD on the radio while driving through central Arizona. I liked what I heard so when I got home I sought it out at my favorite music store.
It was enjoyed but forgotten until recently when my eye caught the label as I was going through my wall of CDs looking for some stuff I hadn't heard in a while.
Despite it being nearly ten years since I bought the CD, I have still not heard any of her other music so I have no points of comparison it. It doesn't matter to me that she is considered a folk/country/bluegrass musician. I like her fine in her guise as a swingmeister. My favorites here are the opening cut God Is A Real Estate Developer, the sexy, slinky and romantic Silent Ways, the bluesy Sleep Keeps Me Awake, Looks Like Mona Lisa, Too Little Too Late, the horn-driven swinger Must Be Luff and an unnamed/unlisted acoustical bonus piece at the end (possibly entitled Russian Roulette) that features some excellent guitar work.
There is enough musical variety here to make anyone happy. If you are taken aback because Captain Swing does not sound like the Michelle Shocked you are used to, don't be. Just listen to it and enjoy!

It's an interesting experiment, but her voice and style simply don't fit swing. She sounds shrill where she should sound soulful, strident where she should sound slinky. The closer to jazz/swing she gets the more the listener cringes--"Streetcorner Ambassador" and "Cement Lament." Ouch.

That said, I first of all have to commend her ambition--with her next album it became clear that she was trying to do nothing less than explore all facets of old American music, of which swing/jazz was a big part.

Second, I have to say that not all of the songs here by any means fit that description. Little Sister is a great rockabilly/blues type number, and Mona Lisa's Having a Bad Day is a great step forward in her songwriting. And occasionally the experiments work--Must Be Luff is just crazy enough, with that Dixieland sound, to be a lot of fun.

It'd be nice to see this rereleased.

I prefer Shocked sticking more with her strength which is Country, Folk and Rockabilly. This release though solidified her genius in music. Michelle didn't take the safe route and was years ahead of Brian Setzer, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Royal Crown Revue doing Swing/Rock before the late 90's craze. A couple of her better songs are only found here. "Sleep Keeps Me Awake" is a roof raising Blues number showcasing Michelle's vocal range by over powering a horn section. "Looks Like Mona Lisa" is arguably her best pop song with a nice story. "Captain Swing" was not a commercial sellout, it's Michelle being creative and rebelling against any categorizing of her music. It makes for a good addition if you already own "Self Sharp Shocked", "Arkansas Traveler" and "The Texas Campfire Tapes". I hope somebody does the right thing and this cd gets reissued.

This album, Michelle's second major label album, is full of breezy beauty and sparkling moments. The atmosphere is airy, less intense than Short Sharp Shocked, and has a fuller sound. The production sounds a little 80s at times, but the songs remain some of her best melodies and cleverest like Everest wordplay (I think she wrote all the music for her first 3 albums at the same time).

Standouts:
God Is A Real Estate Developer ("angels dancin' 'round with pinheads");
On The Greener Side ("send me a dozen long-stemmed roses... I'll bend them into a crown of thorns and send it right back to you");
Silent Ways (everything);
The Cement Lament ("It was that kind of misting rain, it was that kind of night...");
Looks Like Mona Lisa (melody);
Streetcorner Ambassador ("Those patronizing liberals took the words out of your mouth!");
Must Be Luff ("I'll drink the whiskey, don' drink no water, yeah!");
Russian Roulette (the 'mystery song,' "I say Russian Roulette is just a hole in one").

This reissue includes a bunch of pretty polished demos of many of the album songs (usually Michelle and a fiddle accompanist) and live performances. One unreleased demo in particular, "Early Saturday Morning," is beautiful... perfect lazy morning song, strong enough for an album cut, and worth getting the CD for.

Michelle Shocked delivers a CD that is filled with a variety of fun-filled tunes with that sound that is all her. Her lyrics combined with her incredible voice make this a MUST HAVE Michelle Shocked album for any fan. I love to listen to this one on every road trip I take.

The release date on this is soooo wrong - should be maybe five or more years earlier? I notice a lot of release dates on Amazon are incorrect. Released on CD? Maybe, but that doesn't tell us when the music was originally recorded.

Excellent songs here in a multiplicity of styles. From a country sound (On The Greener Side, and Too Little Too Late), to big band blues (Sleep Keeps Me Awake), to jazz (Cement Lament), to full on rock'n'roll (Little Sister), to contemporary (Looks Like Mona Lisa), and even one that sounds like a Bob Fosse musical (Must Be Luff). All the singing, playing and arrangements are beautifully done.

...the cassette it was on blew up in my tape deck. I had to save up my waitress tips when I bought Captain Swing on tape almost (gasp) twenty years ago -- it was one of the best music investments I've ever made. It's not her most political work or her most intellectual, but damn, it's a lot of fun.