Customer Reviews

Country for True Lovers

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excellent musicianship, top-quality production, fantastic performance. Eleni Mandell has a voice perfectly suited for the "music of pain," and she wrings a lot out of it here. The instrumentation is blissfully simple and never distracting; a perfect companion for Mandell's spare vocalizations. If you have ever mistaken a Garth Brooks tune for something by N' Sync, but know old Hank Williams and Patsy Cline tunes by heart, this is an album you'll appreciate.

Grab Country for True Lovers, K.D. Lang's Shadowland, and Neko Case's Furnace Room Lullabies, and you'll be set for a whole evening of two-stepping and crying in your beer when your best friend steals your girl, and your dog drives off with your truck.

Great songs. Great voice. Great musicians. Varied material, influenced by traditional country, blues, Tom Waits, 80s new wave, and who knows what else. Mandell should be a superstar, if this status were determined by quality of her material. This applies to all her albums, not just this one, although County for True Lovers is easiest on the ears at first listening. (She could come up with a better title though...) Highly recommended.

Also, try to catch one of her concerts. I saw her perform at a tiny cafe in Sacramento, and it was one of the best shows I've been to in years.

Eleni Mandell's 'Country For True Lovers' a bit of leap in style from her fantastic, wildly diverse debut 'Wishbone' and its sister follow-up 'Thrill'. But not quite different from her previous album: the rough-edged, acoustically driven 'Snakebite'.
I'm not too familiar with traditional country, or the work of the legendary recording artists who inspired Ms. Eleni to create this lovely collection of honky-tonk and heartache (my knowledge of twang only goes as far as Neko Case), but Eleni could be reading from the phone book, and I'd still be sold. Her voice is that good!
Needless to say, her fans and the un-initiated will love it to pieces. Among others, my favourites are Iowa City, and the campy You're All Bad (And That's Why You've Been Invited), the title alone is one of the best I've seen in a long time!
One minor note: I wish Eleni's rare, still-only-on-45-vinyl song Turn Out The Lights would've been included, maybe as a secret unlisted track at the disc's end. Aside than that, a fine piece of work (recorded in just 14 days!) from one talented lady whose music I discovered by pure chance.

On this album, and the jazz EP "Maybe, Yes" it's hard to divine what Ms. Mandell wrote and what's a cover. Because to her own tunes and well-chosen covers alike she brings her unique brand of soulfulness, sultriness, wisdom, strength and vulnerability. I'm haunted by "Kingsport Town" and "Iowa City." I also love "I've Got a Tender Heart" and "You're All Bad (and That's Why You've Been Invited)".

Now I love this album, as I love all her albums, but if you're new to Eleni Mandell I would not make this my first album. This is great, but I think "Miracle of Five," "Afternoon" and "Thrill" are better intros. On those albums nearly every song is a GEM. All her albums are chock full o' pearls, but those 3 are all all-out lustrous from beginning to end. Oh, who am I kidding, "Wishbone" is great too. Hell, they're ALL good. Look, just get them all. Treat yourself! Believe me, you're gonna end up getting them all anyway.

My country music collection starts at Cline and ends at Lang, but this album could make a convert of me.

I stumbled across Eleni Mandell thanks to Pandora and I listen to this album frequently. I've since purchased two more of her albums that I love just as much and I plan on buying them all. She's that good.

I don't understand almost any questioning of this great record; her music has ALWAYS been about great songs. Most of these songs are amazing, period. There are country-ish and rock-ish and soul-ish songs on all of them. This one has "a theme" of the one style - very classic country. No surprise after reading the title! I love her country-ish songs from all the records - this could have been a great DOUBLE album with those compiled as a bonus disc.

It's nice that it sounds traditional, without sounding dated. I wish more of the classic country artists would make records that sound like this one. A++

i love this cd. this is one of the most listenable country discs of the last decade. eleni mandell's vocals carry this material perfectly, her phrasing is divine. the instrumentation is subtle and tasteful. 12 songs, each one a gem, from slow torch songs to catchy uptempo melodies. get this disc and have a better life than the one you are having without it.

I saw Eleni Mandell in New Orleans at the Mermaid Louge under swooping cars above. She came on stage, just her with her little guitar and her bassist, and showed us what a great performace should be. Nevermind that Tulane Radio SHOULD HAVE gotten us in without a cover. Nevermind the really, really bad bands before her. She was great.
So I got the CD. At the time I was listening to a lot of Kelly Hogan, who has an angelic voice (as you allready know). Eleni, as I call her, is a cousin of Kellys musically, but a differnt peach as well. She has soul. She has a great taste. She knows how to write and sing a song.
She said on stage, probably a joke that she repeats often from up there, "I always say nobody should ever cover Tom Waits songs or this one." Then she sang a beautiful rendition of It's Raining. Even if you aren't a True Lover, you might like this Country.

It's hard to really understand why Eleni has made an album of traditional country songs. Her artistic worth surely lies in a collision of styles, adding up to a stange and original leftfield hybrid. There's nothing remotely leftfield about this album. Maybe that's the point. As an album, as a straightahead country album, it's quite good. And it has a handful of excellent songs. But as a fourth instalment of the Eleni Mandell musical vision? It makes no sense when considered that way. But then, perhaps Eleni doesn't care that much about the evolution of her music. She made a country album because she loves country music. However, I think she has probably alienated alot of her loyal fans by doing so. Would a Tom Waits fan put up with the great man making an album of country music? Probably not. Eleni's last album, Snakebite, was her best and most extreme, and suggested she may move even further into leftfield territory. But now this confounding change of tack. In a way, her wilful disregard of what is expected, is to be admired. In another way, it's hard as a music listener not to shake one's head and wonder at what's going on. She has the freedom to make whatever music she wishes. But does this mean that she actually should? This album is very valid, in that it makes one question whether one should expect anything at all from a favoured artist. Whether it's wrong to want an artist to pursue a certain path over another. Like when Phil Ochs, at the start of the seventies, started doing covers of Buddy Holly. His fans reacted badly. Personally I wish Eleni had not made a country album, because country has been done to death. She does not contribute anything to the genre that hasn't been contributed before. I sincerely hope that this is a one-off project, that she is not now a country artist. If the next album she makes is more of the same, I won't buy it. Loyalty only stretches so far. Eleni is an original talent, and has the ability to continue to make original, offbeat music. Whether she does or not, is entirely her decision.