Customer Reviews

Heartbeats Accelerating

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Heartbeats Accelerating (or, considering the content of most of these songs, Heartbreaks Accelerating) dates to Kate and Anna McGarrigle's best years. Their writing draws from memories of youth, experiences as adults and parents, and collisions with mortality. Their harmonies are complex, buoyant or delicate, and backed with quirky arrangements, often featuring strings or liberal use of the accordion, not exactly a front line pop music instrument north of the Rio Grande. The best songs here are Heartbeats (more prominently recorded by Linda Ronstadt), Love Is (covered by Emmylou Harris), I Eat Dinner, and, my personal favorite since our last child just moved out of the house, I'm Losing You. I listen to this CD and the later Matapedia and think it is too bad the sisters have over the last years faded somewhat into the background in their performances, ceding space to their (to my mind) less interesting children.

This album represents a maturing on the part of this team from their original folk roots. This album is tightly conceived, and if it lakes the brightness of their first album, it has gained a great deal of depth and musicality. Also notable is their continued use of material from Phillippe Tatarchef (Rainbow Ride and D.J. Serenade), whose lyrics always surprise and intrigue. There is an intelligence in their musical choices that belies the apparent simplicity of their songs.

In a way Heartbeats Accelerating is about the exquisite contrast between the excitement of the title cut and the anguish of I Eat Dinner - both songs that are, at the core about love that is somewhere else, but one talks about anticipation and other about loss and regret. The McGarrigle's use this tension brilliantly right through to the final chorus of St. James Hospital. Love blooms and proceeds inevitably to some final injury.

The arrangements are often quite subtle and varied. The two voices, with their nature slightly edgy twang, can move from French chanson styling to pure country without missing a beat. Always though, they are two gentle voices that stand out, even in a storm. This is a sensitive, if somewhat sad album that stand up well to repeated listening.

Leave Me Be is one of the many outstanding tracks on this superb album from the McGarrigles. Leave me Be is heartbreaking and wonderfully written and performed, I just can't get enough. I just got this album last week and I have been on heavy rotation on my CD walkman ever since. If you have not heard them yet, you are in for some of the most amazing music you have ever heard. Beg...or borrow!

I have been a huge fan of the McGarrigles since the 70's...I am so glad everything I loved and wore out on LP is now available on CD. This particular CD is my favorite. Listen to "I Eat my Dinner." And then pick your heart up off the floor and try to put it back the way it was. Impossible. Annie

...since my introduction to the utterly charming work of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, via their 1990 album HEARTBEATS ACCELERATING, their sixth album in a career marked by critical success, popular near-neglect - and a refusal to play by any rules but their own - big-money commercial music industry be damned. Each cut here conjures up a miniature universe all its own: "Rainbow Ride," with Anna's feather-light vocals framing a fairylike dream lyric; "Mother, Mother," a chilling cry born of impending menace - you can feel Kate practically howling at the moon in fear on this one; "Leave Me Be," a sad, sympathetic tale of a rebellious daughter and her tragic end, with Anna's voice at its warmest and most heartbreaking. And that's just for starters. I shall not be at all surprised, if, after your first hopeful sample of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, you jump headlong into their entire body of work, as I did after playing the Arlington (VA) Public Library's copy times without number over five years ago. You'll never be the same. I envy you.

This masterpiece of an album kicks off with the catchy, uptempo title track which is a celebration of romantic love, but the very next song I Eat Dinner is a beautiful description of loneliness and resignation in the absence of romance. The lilting Rainbow Ride is another gem, a melodic song of hope and longing. Throughout the album the voices are pure and gripping, and the harmonising divine, as on the tender Love Is and the poignant I'm Losing You that deals with the feelings of parents seeing a child growing up, in the most poetic lyrics and imagery. Another favorite of mine is Leave Me Be, a very sad song also about the loss of a child. There's an overall feel of sadness to these songs, with the exception of the title track, but it's the most beautiful sorrow you'll ever hear.

Heartbeats Accelerating is the 7th album of Kate & Anna McGarrigle and it reflects the maturity of the artists and the concerns of motherhood. The album was released in 1990, coming at the end of the synthesizer-based music of the 80's. The McGarrigles use synthesizers on this album, but also retain much of the more traditional folk-based instrumentation used in previous albums. If there is a "pop" album their repetoire, this would probably rank as it.

However, the song content is a far from "pop" as possible. While there is a concern with romantic love (Heartbeats Accelerating and Hit & Run Love) the song is tinged throughout with an edgy fatalism. Other songs deal with loneliness (DJ Serenade and I eat Dinner), parent-child conflict (Mother, Mother), and reluctant domesticity (I Eat Dinner). This is an album that will haunt you in both it's beauty and it's fatalistic acceptance of reduced expectations. There is no overwhelming love of one's life, there is instead dinner at the kitchen table with your child.

I add this review to the plethora of other positive reviews because I believe this album is one of the best that the McGarrigles have produced. The songs on this album seamlessly flow from one to the other, yet remain distinct from each other. This album will haunt you...

First I must confess my bias for writer-performers. It takes a multi-talented team to pen both lyrics and music, in addition sing and play instruments. On "Heartbeats Accelerating." Kate and Anna wrote 7 of the 10 songs, provide lead and harmony vocals, and contribute accordion, keyboard and guitar work.

"Heartbeats Accelerating" is a deceptive title - the framework of this CD is loneliness. "I Eat Dinner" finds mother and daughter alone at the dinner table, "Mother Mother" is a haunting image of protectionism and fear, and loneliness and death are united in "St. Johns Hospital. Perhaps the McGarrigles should have concluded the CD on a more optimistic note with the hopeful anticipation of "Heartbeats Accelerating." Guaranteed that you will not be prepared for "Leave Me Alone" - no matter how many times I listen to this composition, it always leaves me tearful albeit blessed.

You also may find a warm and comforting place in the mature and tender world of the McGarrigle sisters.

Produced by Pierre Marchand (before he became more famous), this Canadian made project features some of the sisters best work.
Tracks:
1) Heartbeats Accelerating
2) I Eat Dinner
3) Rainbow Ride
4) Mother Mother
5) Love Is
6) DJ Serenade
7) I'm Losing You (features Rufus Wainwright)
8) Hit and Run Love
9) Leave Me
10) St. James Hospital

I think that Heartbeat Accerating. Since it is top 100. I think that Anna McGarrigle should of got the best award for that song. I think that Kate McGarrigle should of had award for best songwriter.