Honeysuckle Sweet

Jessi Alexander | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 1, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0007N1AHC
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,332 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Until I Turn to You, June 22, 2005

By 

Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Honeysuckle Sweet (Audio CD)

Jessi Alexander's debut is an impressive outing filled with excellent songcraft as a writer, stellar delivery as a vocalist and excellent arrangements that deliver the punch. Looking much younger than her 32 years, the cover art radiates sunshine. On the slow dreamy "Unfulfilled," Alexander croons & moans, "I'm tired of tastin' sulfur, Damn this river water, And lately you know he ain't been too much help, He wasn't always this lazy, I guess he's just gone crazy, He's probably feeling the same way I feel myself." It's a powerful punch. The title track is a lovely anthem to country life with Darrell Scott & Wendy Waldman joining a chorus of background vocals. The set concludes with the gorgeous melody "Canyon Prayer" whose arrangement builds to anthematic proportions with strings as Alexander sings to the Creator, "Tie my hands, ignore my demands, build a wall that stands so high I can't get through until I turn to you." "Can You Make It Feel Right" propels with a hot toe-tapping beat with Colin Linden's excellent electric lead guitar. "The Long Way" makes me hit the repeat button with a catchy melody and Alexander's powerhouse vocal, "He wants to change my zip code & change my luck with warm beer & stale cigarettes." "Honeysuckle Sweet" is an excellent & promising debut. Enjoy!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alexander's Bluesy Sweet Debut, April 21, 2005

By 

Timothy Yap "thy4568" (Sydney, NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Honeysuckle Sweet (Audio CD)

Prime Cuts: Canyon Prayer, Everywhere, I'd Run Right Back to You

Caught in between recording label politics, a sign of relief must have been exhaled by Alexander and her camp when "Honeysuckle Sweet" finally hits the shelves after a two year wait. And country music is indeed richer to have Jessi Alexander as she brings to the genre her canorous vocals textured with a bluesy edge reminiscent of Shelby Lynne and Bonnie Riatt. Not only is Alexander a sultry vocalist with soul, she writes with a deep a level of maturity that betrays her youthfulness. Her keening insights of life and love exude depth and dimension without slipping into stagy world-weariness. Further, her ability to reach into the recesses of the heart allows her to express a rhetoric that is so endearing that country music's stalwarts such as Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea and Trisha Yearwood have cut her songs. Needless to say, "Honeysuckle Sweet" showcases some of her finer compositions mostly as co-writes with other notable scribes such as producer Gary Nicholson, Al Anderson, Sally Barris, Benmont Tench and Austin Cunningham. Augmented by Gary Nicholson's earthy and rustic production, this has resulted in a product that is a cross between southern blues and contemporary country.

Current single "Canyon Prayer" is an instant charmer: a moving ballad of utter surrender to the Lord. From a soft whisper to a crescendo cry Alexander truly captures the desperation of this paean for divine intervention. Accompanied by a piano the first few notes of "Everywhere" unveil a lonely Alexander on another heart wrenching ballads. Dry and crusty as the delta on a high noon in August is the swampy blues "Unfilled." Writing from the viewpoint of a frustrated house wife who had perpetually been through the wringers of loneliness, "Unfilled" surfaces such feelings that few dared to express. On the other hand, the uptempo "I'd Run Right Back to You" has a commercial sheen underscored by its infectiously catchy chorus.

However, radio's response towards Alexander has been lukewarm. This may be because her first couple of singles is good but not outstanding. The banjo and pedal steel strains are unable to save the title cut from its anonymity. With its 80s sounding drums the pop sounding "Make Me Stay or Make Me Leave" is an ultimatum that is not poignant enough for radio lines to light up. Aside from these singles, there are also a few tracks that are just a tad on the ordinary side such as the Jon Randall vocally supported "This World Is Crazy" or the Reba sounding "Can You Make It Feel Right."

Rarely does a major label color outside its lines to sign such a promising artist that is not afraid to stretch the boundaries a little. Shame it would be if Sony drop Alexander due to the lack of radio hits.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A "Honeysuckle Sweet" Debut, June 17, 2005

By 

Erik North (San Gabriel, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Honeysuckle Sweet (Audio CD)

Although she is signed to a major label, country singer Jessi Alexander's debut album HONEYSUCKLE SWEET seems to be the kind of album that you'd be best off finding in the record stores rather than hearing it on corporatized country radio. This is not to say that it isn't a very impressive first album, because it is. It just may be TOO impressive for country radio.

HONEYSUCKLE SWEET reflects not only a love for country music in and of itself, but also other forms, like Southern blues and even vintage swamp rock, given the presence of slide guitars and the like on songs like "Unfulfilled." And there's a true feeling of Southern warmth on songs like the title track and the closing "Canyon Prayer" that put Jessi more in the place of such fringe artists as Tift Merritt or Allison Moorer than with Faith Hill or Shania Twain. The songs themselves, all of which were either written or co-written by her, may not be profound statements, but they are certainly well crafted and well thought out. Ironically enough, given her Southern background, Jessi has also earned comparisons to sage West Coast country-rock goddess Linda Ronstadt in terms of her interpretive abilities--a comparison bolstered on HONEYSUCKLE SWEET by the presence of folks who have worked with Linda, like steel player Dan Dugmore, Benmont Tench, Kenny Edwards, and Wendy Waldman. Aside from having the usual Nashville studio gloss, the album is entirely free from many of the cliched, tailored-for-radio stuff that has clogged country radio for the better part of a decade.

Unfortunately, that last part is precisely why it can't get any airplay; it just isn't what country radio expects. But for anyone with a taste for country music that sounds different from most of what is out there, one can do much worse than this album. Jessi Alexander is an artist worth supporting, no matter what the powers-that-be in country radio might have you believe.