Customer Reviews

Over the Sun

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

 

 

Being a Shannon Wright fanatic, I could see this album was different from her previous works without hearing a note. Wright shows her face on an album cover? And the album title is actually comprehensible on first glance! The album credits continue to suggest a change in Wright's direction, featuring only two players in the lineup (Wright herself with drummer Christina Files, who had played with Mary Timony). Finally, Wright's previous albums had all been released one year apart from one another, so the two-and-a-half-year wait between Over the Sun and Dyed in the Wool is the longest she's taken between records ever since she'd gone solo.

But if the package and band are different, Wright's musical identity remains intact. Over the Sun is as twisty, difficult, and mysterious as any of Wright's previous works, and sonically continues in the direction of Dyed in the Wool, increasingly casting off the folkish, quiet introspection of Flightsafety in favour of the verbal and melodical mazes first glimpsed on Maps of Tacit.

You could say Over the Sun is Wright's art-rock record. Opening track "With Closed Eyes" continues in a tradition of powerful Wright album openers, featuring an insanely twitchy guitar line, funky and primitive, with a definitively pagan feel. "You'll Be the Death" puts folkish fingerpicking on eerie electric guitar, "Black Little Stray"'s guitar could have been a banjo part, and the talk-sing of "If Only We Could" is the closest Wright has ever come to punk rock. "Throw Your Blanket over the Sun" has the album's best vocal performance, weary and soulful, and the muted music and recording (best use of producer Steve Albini's sonic approach I've heard yet) seem to be attempting to conceal some great pain or turmoil.

Wright has been progressively moving away from overt melody and more towards textures, and on this record she's found the perfect partner in Albini and drummer Files. Previous drummer Brian Teasley had a powerful sound, but it was almost obnoxious and at times probably less subtle than the music could have warranted. Files' style is much more like Wright's own drumming, more subtle, focusing on feel and timing rather than Bonhamesque brawn, and is a better complement to Wright's sound and songwriting.

No Shannon Wright record ever yielded its full identity to me on first try, so I'm sure the complete impact of this record will also elude me until months from now. But Over the Sun is another daring, challenging, and idiosyncratic release from a musical genius whose experimentations are at once fascinating and overwhelming.

I bought this album after reading an interview with Wright in some guitar mag, and I was very surprised and blown away with what a great album this is. Song after song is really good. To give you a feel for her sound, she bounces back and forth between sounding like PJ Harvey and Fiona Apple, sometimes combining the two. Some songs are "pretty" (mostly the piano-based songs), some are "intense" (the guitar-based songs).

Don't know anything about Wright but I may now have to check out her earlier albums.

Okay, it's Atlantis Black here and I just have to say that I had to stop listening after the first track--it was that intense. I also am a Shannon Wright fanatic and after her last show here in NYC I left with goosebumps and could neither sleep nor have sex for a week. Well, that's exactly how this album (especially the first track) makes me feel. There is nothing like seeing Shannon Wright live and I feel that this album comes closest to capturing that in terms of its emotional intensity. If I hear the word "melodramatic" in one more industry review of this album I'm going to pull my hair out--it's not melodrama, people--it's MUSIC!! Or if it is melodrama, then I want more of it, and now. Right now. Anyway, this album literally drove me to tears (or it could have been the NYC subway system on which I was listening to it on my headphones). Okay, that's all. You buy it and judge for yourselves.

XXX
--A

Even though no record to date has fully captured the sound, let alone the experience, of Shannon Wright's live show, Over the Sun comes the closest. For my money, it doesn't get any better than this. An incredible voice, great lyrics, intense, orgininal, and adept guitar playing, rock solid drumming, and pristine production from Steve Albini make this album a must. I think that what I like most about listening to this album, however, is that it connects me to my memories of seeing Shannon Wright live. You HAVE to see her live to fully appreciate the music, and you have to see her live because it will be one of the fiercest, rawest performances you'll have the privaledge of witnessing.

Probably I'm alone in this thinking but for me nothing came close to Over The Sun, maybe Wright's own Maps of Tacit or Dyed in The Wool or Carla Bozulich's Evangelista. But when I first heard Over The Sun in 04 it absolutely shattered me, it picked me up and left numerous me-shaped holes in my kitchen wall. And although I have listened to it a thousand times since, it never lessens and still has the power to flatten me.

There are some rare, exceptional artists for whom you are ready to wait for a long time. Shannon Wright is one of them and her most anticipated brand new album is eventually out for our own pleasure. Once again, Mr Steve Albini is mastering the jewel and the delivery is exquisite but quite demanding. Shannon Wright knows how to move the listener, she can play every instrument she bumps into. "Over the sun" is Wright's gloomiest achievment, it is dark but intense, it is sad but beautiful, it is nothing but sincere.Maybe lacking the thinniest streek of light that would have lightened it somehow, this "9-tracks walk of pain and self-depreciation" is still way above average but not as varied as her previous works though. Thank you Shannon, now I've got a reason to wait for Fiona Apple's long overdue third masterpiece.