Although this latest album finds Carrie Rodriguez of Chip Taylor/Carrie Rodriguez fame flying solo, Taylor's fingerprints are easy to find: eleven out of the twelve songs are either written or co-written by him (Rodriguez shares writing credit on four), the album is co-produced by the duo, and Taylor plays acoustic guitar, one of a very fine set of assisting artists.
Nevertheless "Seven Angels on a Bicycle" seems a determined and mostly successful effort to broaden Rodriguez's range from the basically country/folk sound of her duet albums with Taylor--the instrumental colors are much more varied, with world-music, techno-pop and jazz flavors evident. In this "Angels" brings Emmylou Harris' recent work to mind, and just as with Harris, the album occasionally skirts the edge of overproduction. What keeps it from going over is, first, the quality of the material--Taylor's songs in particular are edgy and interesting, a certain hard self-awareness keeping even the most torchy ballads from slipping into corn (not printing his frequently intricate lyrics is an annoying drawback of the otherwise glamorous production). Second, Rodriguez' voice is strong enough to keep from getting buried in the background. In some of the slow numbers, "He Ain't Jesus" and "Big Kiss" in particular, she lets loose with full-throated sounds that some more mainstream pop queens would be proud to possess. All is not lost for fans of earlier albums, though; "Never Gonna Be Your Bride" and "I Don't Want to Play House Anymore" mine familiar funky-country territory with entertaining results. All in all, "Seven Angels on a Bicycle" will not disappoint fans of this very talented young artist.
