Customer Reviews

Coming Down

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This album is such a mixed bag for the simple reason that nearly half the songs are familiar to most big Anders fans. It's the new material that shines the brightest on this album with three songs really sticking out clearly to me.

"Coming Down" - the title track, is an upbeat (for this album anyway) song that really digs into some deep material. The lines about talking when he's got nothing to say and being deadly silent when he really needs help are wonderful, along with his lines on addiction that you know come straight from the heart.

"Miss you when I'm gone" - There's something really beautiful in the vocals on this song. They are more melodious than a lot of his other songs and really display his vocal range. I find myself singing along to this tune each time it plays. Love the line about the smoking chair on the porch; I can totally picture it.

"Lucky One" - I played this over again 5 times to write down the lyrics because it just sounded so right to me from first listen. It's a song you could easily hear on a soundtrack or a trailer for a movie about a guy who derives his strength from a woman. It's a great song.

The songs you may have heard before get new treatment, and for the most part I prefer the previous versions to these "stripped down" versions.

"Summertime in New Orleans" - it's just a much happier and fuller song with Chief Monk and on that album. It's not bad here; I just prefer the previous version

"Back on Dumaine" - as with many great performers, the live version of this song really trumps this version. Is there an actual string bass being played on this track? Having been spoiled by great live versions, I just don't prefer this version.

"Oh Katrina" - this version is solid and a live rendition doesn't overshadow it completely. I love the version from Live at Tips too, but this is solid.

"I've Got a Woman" - I was so happy to see this would be a track recorded for the album, but this falls the shortest from a live rendition. It's one of my favorites and the tempo from a live version just makes this an inferior rendition by several counts. This song live is far better.

"Spotlight" is a song that comes and goes on me - it's not one of my favorites but I don't know why.

"Back on my Feet" - I don't know what I think about this one either. I love the chance Anders takes on this with the vocals - very unique and sometimes it comes out beautiful while other times it kinda hurts my ears. Love the ambition though.

"My Old Heart" - great song and very cool. Really enjoy this one and consider it one of the better songs on the album.

It's not Ash Wednesday or Living Room, but it's right on par with Bury The Hatchet - a very good album by one of my favorite artists playing music today. I've listened to at least one song on this album every day since I downloaded it.

There has been plenty of rhetoric about New Orleans music post-Katrina, but just as 9-11 didn't produce a wellspring of inspired popular music, Katrina has failed to inspire the bumper crop of musical observations that many predicted. There have been a few good songs written about the event and its aftermath to be sure, but the disaster is too large scale to be swallowed whole in a song.

While a return to what used to be considered normal is out of the question, the resumption of attention to the task at hand, the day-to-day business of making music, is the best that can be reasonably expected of New Orleans musicians. In this respect, Anders Osborne is to be congratulated for putting the difficult work in to produce the album's worth of songs that make up Coming Down. Those looking for Big Statements may be disappointed, but Osborne sticks to what he knows. He found in New Orleans what so many others have discovered over the last century, a chance to become himself, to revel, even wallow, in the good times and eventually find salvation in a loving partner. His songwriting gifts have reflected the rollercoaster of emotions such behavior produces, and Coming Down returns to those strengths. The multi-chorus guitar solos that characterized the live album he released last year are absent from this record; instead, the songs themselves and Osborne's R&B influenced vocalizations are the featured elements.

The title track leads off and sets the tone for the album, just as Ash Wednesday Blues did. Osborne admits his flaws, acknowledges his addictions and finds himself coming back down to earth with gravity's acceleration. "Keep your arms wide open baby," he tells his lover, "I'm comin' down." The flashback to those good times is delivered on "Summertime in New Orleans," a catalog of simple Big Easy joys.

Osborne delivered "Oh Katrina" as a macho diatribe on his recent live album, but this studio version is imbued with sly style, Osborne giving it all the blue-eyed soul he's got. The resemblance to Van Morrison's work, especially in Osborne's laconic, melismatic vocalizations, is striking. "Spotlight" sounds like nothing so much as a classic Morrison love song, as does the nostalgically regretful admission of weakness "Back on Dumaine," Kirk Joseph's sousaphone recalling Richard Davis' bass on Astral Weeks. Similarly the solo acoustic recital "I've Got a Woman" shimmers poetically in its simple devotion to its subject.

Nashville's most overt influence on Osborne's writing appears to come in the traditional murder ballad "When I'm Back on My Feet," a collaboration with his Nashville producer Troy Verges. This lengthy meditation on good and evil, murder, devotion and deliverance seems firmly in the tradition of country murder ballads until you consider some of the bizarre murder and suicide tales that have been nurtured in New Orleans for generations, with several grisly new chapters added since Katrina. The spectral presence of the dead in our lives, beckoning mutely for us to join them in whatever afterlife they inhabit while they haunt us in this one, is one of the uneasy legacies of Katrina, one which mocks the empty bravado of recovery rhetoric suggested by the song's title.

--John Swenson, OffBeat Magazine, www.offbeat.com

This is a collection of incredibly personal, beautifully written songs by Anders Osborne. It manages to be both heartbreaking and hopeful as he sings about his love for his wife and his struggles with addiction.

I think he is the most underrated singer songwriter performing today. This album will not disappoint you!

I don't think it is possible to purchase anything bad by Anders Osborne. Whether it is an older album or a live recording from Jazz Fest, Anders never fails to entertain with quality lyrics and superb musicianship. Coming Down is another solid effort by this prolific songwriter. Buy this or any Anders titles. You wont be disappointed.

Osborne sings his heart out on this wonderful CD. It's not as raucous as some of his previous work, but it strikes me as being more heartfelt. There are ballads about New Orleans, love and loss. The lyrics seem to speak of home, whether found in a city or a loved one. In the end, the music is quite hopeful and rich. It is a beautiful, sometimes rough-ish, but honest CD.

I pre-ordered this copy and received it a day before it's release. I listened to it half heartedly while doing other things. I wasn't all that impressed. It wasn't until it was in my car, alternating between Living Room, Ash Wednesday Blues, and then Coming Down that I found the stark beauty of this release. What I was missing originally, was the rockin' Anders I've seen so many times live, with his cohort Kirk on the sousaphone. This is Anders, stripped down, vulnerable, and truly lovely. Rockin' or laid back, the man can play with a passion and his voice is one I would love to hear singing me to sleep. This will play in my car for quite some time.

My favorite Anders Osborne CDs were Ash Wednesday Blues & Living Room, although "Which Way to Here" & "Break the Chain" also have their great tracks. "Coming Down" is a bit laid back in comparison. Softer can also be excellent. "Back on Dumaine" percolates like a reincarnated Van Morrison, "I've been dreaming, never doing what I should have been; wish I was back with my baby, wish I was back on Dumaine." "Spotlight" delights with Osborne's vocals bubbling over with the joy of a good strong love, "Nothing lights me up like seeing you." "Oh Katrina" shuffles slowly with a burning blues as if the Hurricane Katrina were a woman, "The first time I met you, you blew me away." "I've Got a Woman" was penned by Anders and is sung with his acoustic guitar backing him with passionate vocals. "Lucky One" concludes the set with a burning vocal track laid over a piano & bass arrangement.

this album is a beautiful thing. Production is excellent, pacing and song craft are exceptional. Emotion is high, lyrics haunting and musicianship superb.

This is our first Anders Osborne CD, and we love it!! It kind of reminds me of old Jackson Browne music I used to listen to all the time. We highly recommend this CD.

A style that can be enjoyed by everyone. It makes you feel like you're in New Orleans.