Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprise, August 18, 2002
My socially instilled biases kept me from ever giving K.D. Lang's music a listen. Then I watched the video; Who wrote that music?! Who sang that music?! It was K.D. Lang. Now I understand. She wrote some incredibly beautiful music for this movie. The quality of the album is consistent from track to track. It's a clear 5 stars. I can't really understand anyone giving it less.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Turns and strokes, December 27, 2000
Although this album was released one year after K.D.'s commercial breakthrough "Ingenue", it functions as a sort of link between the country-pop of "Shadowland" and the fragile singer/songwriter material of her latter-day work. K.D.'s emotive and uplifting music has always seemed to be tailor-made for road movies, love stories and stuff where young people discover 'the red side of life', and so this album was commissioned as a soundtrack to the seldom-seen movie of the same name. I haven't seen the film, but according to other people it must be a total disappointment with a poor story and nothing really going on. It also caused this soundtrack to sell very poorly, so there's also a cheap cut-out edition of this album available at amazon.com. "Even cowgirls.." is quite a bit different to K.D.'s other albums because it's constructed as a series of short instrumentals and incidental mood music which are held together by more carefully formed and composed tracks like "Lifted by love" and "In perfect dreams". Generally, there's nothing here which is as brilliant as singles like "Constant craving", but this albums seems to be considerably more experimental and multi-dimensional than much of K.D.'s other work. K.D. and her long-time musical collaborator Ben Mink (he has recently worked with Rush singer/bass player Geddy Lee for the album "My favorite headache") haven't abandoned the stylish late-night pop of "Ingenue" and the smoky atmosphere, they've just built around it and come up with a variety of interesting instrumental touches which further enhace the sonic palette. Mink also plays guitars and strings on nearly all tracks. "Just keep me.." opens the album, and while K.D.'s voice sets the tone of the vocal things to come, the jaunty bass line and the funky organ breaks keep everything danceable in unexpected ways. The 1-minute "Much finer place" is completely different; a distant, introverted piece with dark guitar chords and mono audio quality! Several other tracks feature a fine interplay between guitars/violins/pianos, such as "Or was I", "Overture", and "Myth". After two forgettable snippets ("Apogee", "Virtual vortex", which are the two shortest pieces) in the middle of the disc, "Lifted by love" offers another surprisingly pop-oriented melody with pumping bass line and one of K.D.'s best vocal performances. The swinging, romantic "In perfect dreams" can be compared with "Miss Chatelaine" (off "Ingenue"), and "Ride of.." is another piece with quite strong guitar playing by Mink. The last three songs feel more like leftovers from K.D.'s '80s work, with their funny, country-esque arrangements and upbeat rhythms. All in all, the vocal-oriented material like "Just keep..", "Lifted..", or "In perfect.." offers quite some sparks and would have deserved some radio airplay, while the shorter pieces mostly do little to inspire. But mind you - any soundtrack album with only a few mediocre tracks and an amazing variety of approaches must be regarded as a success. This was an interesting stopgap project for K.D. - often overlooked and underrated - and perhaps worth checking out for people who have only listened to her recent albums.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I love it, April 8, 2002
By A Customer
I pull this out every year or so and give it a good play. Her voice is as beautiful as ever but the soundtrack has the added attraction of variety. I just feel like I'm riding over the plains on horseback through the whole thing. Very relaxing and beautiful. I think if you like kd lang at all, you will appreciate this very much.
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by k.d. lang 
