Buffy Sainte-Marie
Quiet Places
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Always a fiercely independent figure on the pop scene, Buffy Sainte-Marie carries a personality clout so strong she is almost invariably at her best performing without sidemen. This becomes doubly clear when one sees her live. At a recent Philharmonic Hall appearance, she was most entrancing when alone onstage, singing familiar "protest" material that, given the climate of Watergate and Wounded Knee, assumed a classic, moving contemporaneity. Subsequently she trotted out a total of 18 backup musicians, including horns and strings, to duplicate the sound of her recent albums, and the result was somewhat anticlimactic. Quiet Places is Buffy's second "rock" album, recorded in Nashville
Read More and co-produced by Norbert Putnam. It is also probably her last for Vanguard, since another completed album, with a high price tag on it, is reportedly up for grabs. Six of Quiet Places' 12 songs are Buffy Sainte-Marie originals. Among the other six are Mickey Newbury's "Why You Been Gone So Long," Joni Mitchell's "For Free" (a piercing interpretation), Randy Newman's "Have You Seen My Baby," and King-Goffin's "Eventually," fine songs all, rendered with insight and vivacity. As in the case of the last album, however, ultimate acceptance of this one depends on one's acceptance of Buffy's distinctively taut singing style, with its buzzing vibrato and wavering pitch, applied within a rock setting. For while distinctiveness is one thing, discomfort is another; one gets the feeling that Buffy is continually racing to keep up with the momentum and in so doing, sacrificing some of her expressive power. Though her own material is, as usual, tightly crafted and melodic with well-turned lyric phrases, there is no single song as arresting as "Moonshot," the title cut and crown jewel of her last album. Characteristically, the emotional tenor of Buffy's artistry, furious passion constrained by intellect, is her paramount virtue. This energy she can unleash in a torrent of wild rapture, as in the string-laden love ballad, "No One Told Me." More frequently, however, it is turned toward ironic recrimination. "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain When She Comes" is a skillful, sarcastic feminist statement, and "Quiet Places" (the album's best BSM song), with its demand, "show me in a world that's all gone mad that there are still quiet places," a complaint against civilization itself. (RS 143) STEPHEN HOLDEN |
