Customer Reviews

Translated From Love

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Had a chance to see Kelly and band play recently at a the Granada Theater in Dallas. It had been years since I last saw her in concert. Very memorable concert. Her voice really shines through on this new album and in a live concert it's a spectacularly refreshing alternative country sound, not something you'de expect from today's typical country bands that all start to sound the same after a while. Her husband Bruce Robison has written songs for George Strait.

If you get a chance to see her in a live concert, don't miss the opportunity to hear one of Texas' finest as she plays songs from this new album, which grow on you after just one playing. Go Kelly! Welcome back and keep up the song writing and singing:-)

Once again Kelly draws you in with her stunning vocals. She has mastered the ability to surround herself with extreme talent as well in writers and musicians. This CD is better than Easy but not quite as good as What I Deserve. My personal favorite is Don't Know Why and there are several very good tunes her. Maybe one or two duds but her duds are still better than the garbage Nashville puts out. She is a class act.

For me Kelly Willis sits comfortably next to other alternative country queens Lucinda Williams, Alison Krauss and Kasey Chambers. Like the others, her voice has that unique quality that can tear your heart out.

Translated From Love is a first class from start to finish, with a great mix of ballads and uptempo songs. For me, only the David Bowie/Iggy Pop song, Success, falls marginally short of the mark. My biggest problem with the album is that it took so long for Kelly to follow up her 2002 gem, Easy.

Kelly Willis will never see much air play, as long as she continues to be herself. Her Austin based sound gets categorized as alt.country, which actually means her style is more country than CMT allows. I have loved her music and have missed her these last few years.

This album explores an expanded vision of her style - straying from the barriers of "alt.country' without ever leaving herself or her roots behind.

If you don't know Kelly Willis and hope you might be getting more of Nashville samo samo, stay away. If country swing is your thing, you probably already know her. For you, this is a must have.

this is a fabulous album. I really liked Teddy Boys, and some of the other more rockabilly-type songs

I am probably not the best person to review anything by Kelly Willis. She could sing a tim mcgraw song and I would love it. She can do no wrong with that beautiful voice. I saw her recently at the Cats Cradle in NC and she blew me away. My only complaint was she only played 90 minutes. This cd rocks a little more than her last one. All tracks are good, with Teddy Boys being my personal favorite.

Kelly Willis is a treasure, I would recommend this to anybody that enjoys good country music.

Kelly Willis is a great singer from the Austin area. This album is very good and easily expands her range into all aspects of the country genre.

My remarks are intended to place this album in a capsule career history for those unfamiliar with Kelly Willis' work. Austin's Kelly Willis is one of the great rockin' honky tonky fillies, who emerged in the 90's to take her place besides peers like Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynne, Carlene Carter and Rosanne Cash, as gals with just enough testosterone to seem to be picking up the fallen baton of 50's renegade rockabilly babes, Wanda Jackson and Janice Martin (a concert ticket with the latter's name appears on Willis' debut, implicitly stating a claim to that legacy). An exceptionally pretty, freckled and wholesome-looking strawberry blonde - one year People mag named her among its top 50 most beautiful individuals - she seemed poised for big things commercially in C & W for a time in the late 90's, rather like Shelby Lynne. Her first two albums for MCA are dominated by not entirely convincing pop rockabilly in which Kelly's essentially cheery and well-adjusted personality shines through undermining any pretense that she is a bad girl who could truly get down and dirty. On her third, final and finest major label album, the eponymously named Kelly Willis, Kelly realized all her potential: she found her true forte, bittersweet, poignant ballads, to place alongside the rockers; the tempos, instrumentation and cover material were more varied; and the love songs lyrically deepened and were sung in a more emotionally affecting manner. (This progress seems largely related to the fact she had ditched her husband, drummer and song-writing collaborator - a well-meaning mediocrity with good taste but not quite enough talent - sometime before and learned something about disappointment and heartbreak, presumably.) This great album failed again to breakthrough commercially, leaving her a cult figure to carry on her career with indie labels. Her initial indie album for Rykodisc in the late 90's, What I Deserve, most consider her finest and it showed the same strengths, if not actually built upon them further.

Unfortunately, for her fans, Kelly remarried and began reproducing and disappeared from sight for a few years and these developments both derailed her career and made her boring. Her second and penultimate album, Easy should have been called Easy Listening because it is a series of somnolent, if sometimes lovely, ballads. It is uterine music obviously the product of excess estrogen. Fortunately for her fans, Kelly has since divorced - heartbreak is unquestionably good for her art - and she is raising three boys, not girls, so the testosterone flows freely again, balancing out things hormonally. Well, Translated From Love represents a tremendous comeback from the career misstep of Easy: Kelly is clearly done with her maternal cocooning and has emerged from her chrysalis full of piss and vinegar and is rocking again, in her rough and tumble way, and bending hearts with her moving ballads. (As for the details, I defer to the other reviewers.)

Hallelujah.

With Chuck Prophet at the helm, Kelly Willis delivers a recording that's worth the wait, and that is the equal of her superb and compelling live performances. One of 2007's best, by far.

Friends invited me to the Mucky Duck in Houston this past Saturday. It was my first time hearing Kelly Willis. Her pinch hitting one man back up band was her husband Bruce Robison. Her bass player had left her for his wife (not for the first time and not in the romantic sense) and her drummer was doing well recovering from a heart attack. She belongs in Austin this is not Nashville country music. I liked her show and bought a signed CD. The intimate acoustic show was good although having listened to the CD I now want to see her with her regular back up band. It's my first Willis CD and I really like it. It's refreshing change from country radio which I can only take in small doses as they normally have such a short Nashville centric playlist.