Customer Reviews

This World Is Not My Home

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

 

 

I find myself listening to this one over and over.

I love her voice--somewhere between Lucinda Williams and Kasey Chambers--and the accompanying music adds a dimension often missed by other artists in that it truly complements rather than competes with the vocal.

I was not familiar with this artist until being drawn to the lovely cover art and deciding to take a chance. Glad I did.

This album is fantastic! It is such a relief to find a fresh, new sound with all the canned, drum machine, mixed stuff out right now. I met her in TN (she's really sweet) and purchased the album from her and lost it. Quickly, I found I missed it in my collection so bought another. Amy has recorded a great album that nicely blends the blues, country and jazz. What an amazing sound that is perfect for any setting. Her voice transfers the depth of the lyrics and the songs are relatable. The song choices range from the deep (This World is Not My Own) to the whimsy (Sailing??)and it is a purchase I encourage any music fan to make. Best album I've purchased in years.

That is the best word to describe this debut effort from this virtually unknown artist. There are hints of Norah Jones, Martha Wainwright, Jolie Holland here 'n' there. Yet Amy definitely has a sound & style all her own.
I recommend all the selections on this album. Her interpretations are such that you forget the original versions, but it is her own compositions I admire most.
My only gripe is its shortness. It leaves you wanting more & more of what you just heard. So the best solution is to simply play it again!
The arrangements are perfect(Taylor's production is to be commended). And it is not that Amy has the most powerful or amazing voice. Not at all. She is a singer who is clearly aware of her strengths & her weaknesses, & therefore sings in such a fashion that it puts you in some sort of...heaven. Honestly!
I discovered Amy LaVere (as I do with many artists) from, of all places, the Ben Stiller/Farrelly Bros movie Heartbreak Kid ("Take 'Em or Leave 'Em").
On top of all that she's a beautiful specimen of a woman & plays the upright-bass to boot!
Check her out AND her follow-up 'Anchors & Anvils' which is equally as good (yet as short as well).

Amy Lavere has a voice like those oh-so-vulnerable, little-girl singers of the Roaring Twenties singing, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." You don't really believe them. Nor do you believe Lavere. There's a tongue in cheek, amusing flavor to her songs. The flavor of the CD is conveyed by the cover photo of small angelic Amy with her great big stand up bass.

The 10 songs range from country -- "Leaving" is a clone of "Your Cheatin' Heart" -- to jazz, rock, and cabaret. The instrumentation is acoustic and electric guitars, quavery mandolin, steel guitar, keyboards and Amy's own bass. It won't fit in any genre. The subject of the songs include loss of innocence and broken romances. Lavere wrote several of the songs. I wish the album included the clever lyrics. Example: "We went sailing...you jumped ship to fish for another....you'd be swimming by with the other sharks...making my world dark....And I don't go fishin' anymore."

I liked this CD well enough to immediately order her followup CD "Anchors and Anvils." Lavere is a winner.

Smallchief

LaVere, in this her debut LP, achieves her successful outcome mainly by not overstretching. Her lilting voice and stripped down instrumentation, are the perfect counterpoint to all of the country/pop floating around the airways. Unfortunately, something so real and unadulterated is usually only found on the obscure college station, or public radio airwaves, so if you are lucky enough to stumble across this record, buy it. And her second. And keep an eye out for anything forthcoming by Miss LaVere, as I can't imagine you will be disappointed.

I love Amy LaVere's voice, well what's not to love? For a tiny thing, she commands a mighty prescence. Dressed in calico and cotton, she holds onto a bass that seems twice her size, until she sings. Her voice carries through the cavern air of din and warren, drifting over the rhythm of stretched skin and steel to caress grateful tympanum.

A thousand years from now alien-human hybrid clone archeologists will look across the vast landscape that was America and imagine the last millenium of growth with congested cities, twisted highways with concrete covering almost every concievable inch of green earth and wonder: what did the land look like?
What were the people like? Who were these ancient Americans? What did the landscape look like to them? Verdant valleys and golden fields, stretching to the horizon, dotted only by blue lakes and crossed by rivers and streams...

Somewhere the song of the nightingale will drift on the wind and take them back to this ancient beautiful land...

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