Customer Reviews

Shotgun Singer

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

 

 

This album is a pleasant and unexpected change from Kris' other work. The songs are just a bit hit and miss, since the arrangements can be too convoluted at times. However, her more somber songs are truly exceptional. My favorites are probably Heavens Hold The Sun, If Not For Love, Riverwide and Freediver. They really showcase her talent as a songwriter. I gave this album 4 stars. Shotgun Singer is definitely worth the money.

This CD is a departure from her previous efforts, which had more of a folksy/country feel to them, and a very welcome one for me. Every song is loaded with excellent, original lyrics, engaging and ethereal music, and a much more cohesive emotional content than anything else she's done. It is that rare elixir that takes you away from your cares and worries for a few sweet moments. Highly recommended.

Kris is a great talent and should receive more attention.
I saw her live two nights ago in Providence RI and she was as always a great performer!!, Nelson DeCoteau

Just saw Kris this past weekend in concert and she mostly sang songs from Shotgun Singer. She is just as good in concert as she is on the album.

A lovely record emphasizing the singer's soulful vocal textures and beautiful melodics. Production values range from the sparse to the lush, presenting and complementing KD's material handsomely. Highly recommended to fans of genre.

Just who is this Kris Delmhorst, for Kris-sakes? Successor to Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Sean Colvin, or maybe perhaps the great but not so late Natalie Merchant? Would she play Lillith Fair were it alive and kicking today? Does she see herself as some type of art house musician demagogue or exposing her artistic soul because she loves the song and simply has to for the sake of humankind? These are a lot of questions, now let's talk about the music.

I went out and purchased Delmhorst's Shotgun Singer on the same day I acquired two other excellent albums For So Long and "Too Much Desire" also by the famed Texas Hill Country poetess Robyn Ludwick. Of the three works, I guess my tastes lean towards Texas and vocals that aren't as pure. Give me the Dylan or the Springsteen or the Robert Earl Keen any day. Give me the pipes with flaws but the singers that sing from the gut anyway over the crystal clear purist. Delmhorst has a beautiful entrancing voice no doubt but it does remind me most of Sean Colvin or any number of coffeehouse chanteuses in that vein. A woman who bears her artistic soul for all to see and hear. This is how Delmhorst crosses me.

So on to the songs, there's some standouts for sure here. "Blue Adeline," track 1 is nothing short of bewitching with its Sunday morning waking up haze and its dusky cool purr leaving you easy in the soul and entranced. The music moves along at a snail's pace mind you but perhaps it reveals how the music was made. Story has it, that Kris holed herself up in some cabin in New England and came up with all these numbers solo in the deep dark of the night and later added additional musicians. Kind of like Springsteen Nebraska-style, eh?

"Freediver," track 11 is another one that works and works well. There is a slow plucking guitar line following the scale up and down repeatedly. Delmhorst's lounge jazzy voice accompanys it barely, in hushed fashion. It makes me want to put on my birkenstocks and wool socks and sip espresso all dressed in black, yes, my friend its that good.

So if you ain't into the Lillith and haven't cared too much for the wonderful music of Natalie Merchant, well then this here my friend probably ain't for you. But if you 'uns likes the beautiful songs every now and then and just wants to chill on a Sunday morning, get Kris Delmhorst's "Shotgun Singer." Now. I mean it. ...mmw

I bought this for my wife as she heard a song on our local community radio station. I honestly haven't heard the disc but my wife only had this to say after a few listens to the complete CD. Disappointing, see if you can give it away.