Customer Reviews

Crack It Open

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I saw Ina May play solo live and liked the show a lot, so I bought the new cd, but I had no idea how much I would love this recording. I put it on when I want to feel better - it just kind of carries me away.

You ease in with a shimmery instrumental and then it goes into a song called Taxi - lots of bounce and sass - "I talked to the taxi driver/said he came from Pakistan." It's a musical hybrid, like the whole CD. Marc Ribot is playing some strange subliminal guitar sounds somewhere in there. I had heard his name before because he played with Elvis Costello and Tom Waits, two of my all time favorites.

Anyway, the next song is the title track, "Crack it Open." Moody, intense.

"Frida" is about Frida Kahlo and I just love this song. The chorus is "The love embrace of the universe/La vida abierta, life opened/The red and the yellow, the gold and the green/The love embrace of the earth." Very emotional.

"Rosa" is the story of a friend who needs encouraging - poetic lyrics - Ina May doesn't hit you over the head with a message or anything - but you definitely get your own pictures - there's a lot of ocean and storm in this one.

I love "Big Black Bear." It makes me laugh every time when she says "I feed him lots of chocolate candy/because it seems to calm him down." When I saw her play she said she has a bear wandering around inside her head. Ok, yes, I know the feeling.

"When Tears Come Down" has mandolin, Irish bazouki, silde guitar, kind of "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" backporch music with a bluesy vocal. Murky, dark, hopeful. It sort of crashes on you, rocks you gently.

Here We Go" makes me laugh. I guess Ina May must have been in a band - it's not jokey - kind of sad and funny at the same time. A story. "First get a car for one hundred fifty dollars/a 1968 powder blue Eldorado/put your guitars and your two amplifiers/in the back so it rides really low." I find the melody of this one sticking in my head. There are clarinets and flutes- and banjo and Wurlitzer old-fashioned electric piano.

I've got to say the producer, Daniel A. Weiss, did an amazing job on this CD - all these different sounds and textures - so it sounds really different - but like you heard it before in some dream somewhere.

By this time when I'm listening - and I'm usually cleaning my house or getting ready to go out or something -then Lucky comes on and I really have to stop and just listen. It's a beautiful love song - but this being Ina May she has to throw some quirky stuff in there too - "I got very lucky/when I found you/twenty-dollar bill on the road lucky/hog lucky/hawk lucky/wheeling around in the sky lucky/buck lucky." Like how feelings really are - all mixed up together.

So far I've described every song in order and this is sooo long - there are 14 in all and I love the whole thing. I hope lots of people get to hear this music. If you need comparisons to other artists - I would say it's sort of in the Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, Dar Williams world...with some Dylan Thomas poetry thrown in, and a handful of Loretta Lynn, maybe a bit of Billie Holiday.

Ina May Wool's new CD, "Crack It Open," is a true gift. Her rich vocal style, though uniquely her own, suggests a melding of influences--from country twang to smooth jazz to classic rock--all of which are beautifully enhanced with just the right sounds by her talented producer and arranger, Dan Weiss. Speaking of gifts, Ina May's superb songwriting talents are on display here, traveling ever further through the evocative landscape we first glimpsed in "Moon over 97th Street," her debut CD--from "Taxi," an urban folk tale, to a knowing portrait of the artist, "Frida" Kahlo; through the persistence of a "Big Black Bear," to the up-tempo saga of "Serial Lover." This is a gift for all seasons: Crack it Open!

When I listen to Ina May Wool (in Crack It Open), backed by a full band laying down a groove, tossing her limber voice all over the place for joy;

when I hear her singing a gentle ballad of empathy for someone she has befriended, with words so poetic that they hurt;

I have to wonder, why is this woman not on TV? She should be in everyone's conversation! The world is a mysterious place.

Everyone seems to call themselves a singer/songwriter these days, but Ina May Wool's music runs very far out in front of the pack. She has a gorgeous voice and a gift for telling stories that draw you in and keep you coming back for more. Her rootsy songs which draw on folk, country and rock are accompanied by a very cool sounding blend of acoustic and electric instruments.
I gambled on buying this album because of an Amazon recommendation and haven't stopped playing it since it got here!

--- BH, a huge new fan!!