Solitude Standing

Suzanne Vega | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: A&M
• ASIN: B000002GHB
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,964 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #90 in Music > Folk > Contemporary Folk > Alternative Folk
  • #98 in Music > Alternative Rock > Singer-Songwriters

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Suzanne Vega emerged in the mid-'80s, and while her intimate voice and acoustic guitar brought to mind Joni Mitchell, her urbane lyrics suggested a sensibility that was as much reportorial as confessional. Vega's second album, which replaced the delicate acoustic textures of her self-titled debut with more dramatic arrangements, includes Vega's career song, "Luka," surely one of the biggest hits ever written about child abuse. But it was the energetic folk-rock production of "Luka," thick with ringing guitars and pushed by perky drums, that let the listener luxuriate in a song that suggested the darkness that can lurk behind a neighbor's door. The title tune confronts personal loneliness with a similarly powerful performance, while "Ironbound/Fancy Poultry" makes a downtown landscape sound downright homey. Well-turned tunes like "Calypso" and "Gypsy" recall the softer textures of her debut. Ironically, Vega's next big hit would come when the English production duo DNA made a dance hit out of "Tom's Diner," a nursery-rhyme tribute to a coffee shop that opens the album. --John Milward

Product Description

Solitude Standing [Audio Cd] Suzanne Vega

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars So much more than just "Luka" September 15, 1999

By [e-mail]

Format:Audio CD

Although most know Suzanne Vega for a song on this record ("Luka"), it's only one reason to add this one to your collection. _Solitude Standing_ is thoughtful, touching, elegant. From "Ironbound Fancy Poultry"'s use of chicken parts as metaphor for their sellers' dreams of freedom to the title track's quiet poetry, this is one of those rare recordings that is solid from start to finish. Highly recommended.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Still standing head & shoulders above anything else... October 4, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Audio CD

There are those who want fireworks, Kiss-style with their music. There are those who want depth and musical sophistication--and get into some cerebral art-rock like Pink Floyd, where excellence and excess aren't that far apart.

....And then there's just good music. Like Suzanne Vega. English majors everywhere probably drool over this album, since it's striking that strange but serene balance between elegant simplicity and artistic depth. No one else could tackle growing pains, domestic abuse, the inadequacy of words, the cheapness of exterior beauty, and countless other subjects with such an honest, unassuming style. Encounters with other devotees of this woman have proved interesting--usually female, usually of a slight hippie persuasion (not that this is bad!). However, I took a chance on this album and I promptly became a believer; it's hard not to. There's something about her music that is genuinely timeless, however much people might try to lump her into the Lilith Fair crowd. People will still be spinning "Luka" long after trends have come and gone. She's a true artist in the best sense of the word, and people of her honesty and depth are too rare in the music business.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stands the test of time December 19, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Audio CD

This CD, Suzanne Vega's second, brought her commercial success through two of its best songs. Fans who are folk purists have something bad to say about everything after her first, eponymous, recording. Most of us, however, would never have heard that first recording if not for the success of this one, and it was successful for good reason. It isn't that the warmer sound or the use of distinctive instrumentation drew in fans, though some of the experiments with new sounds here seem to foreshadow her later work with Mitchell Froom. It's that Ms. Vega's poetry - and her lyrics truly are poetry - moved from the steady cool flow of her first album to include several truly outstanding songs like "Luka", "In the Eye", "Language", "Solitude Standing", "Ironbound", and "Tom's Diner", that jump out and grab the listener emotionally. And it's interesting to be grabbed so fiercely by such a tiny soft voice uttering such powerful words.

Where the a capella "Tom's Diner" has one marveling at Vega's descriptiveness again, as well as a simple but captivating beatnik beat, "Luka" and "In the Eye" are absolutely breathtaking in their quiet intensity. Reviewers here have diverse interpretations of "In the Eye", but I hear another abusive relationship in its worst moments as she calmly sings, "If you were to kill me now right here I would still look you in the eyes. And I would burn myself into your memory as long as you were still alive. I would live inside of you, I'd make you wear me like a scar." Her poetry acquires more feeling on this album, from my perspective. "Gypsy", though not the best song here, actually has warmth to it, something new to her repertoire at the time. "Solitude Standing" and "Language" are more her usual brilliant but cool and abstract use of language, discussed and quoted ad nauseum below, but absolutely lovely. Her descriptions of the urban landscape on "Ironbound" bring back vivid memories of neighborhoods I haven't seen in 35 years.

I rarely listen to this CD anymore, taken more by the sound of "99.9Fş" or the lyrics of "Songs in Red and Gray" when I'm in a Suzanne Vega mood. But this is a cohesive consistent beautiful recording without a bad song and many a great one, even by Suzanne Vega standards. Which is to say the lyrics are magnificent, the music lovely, and that it's miles above work done by any other singer/songwriter I can think of. And it's an obvious starting point for anyone interested in her work.