Melanie - Stoneground Words

If you remember way back to our first encounter with Melanie, you'll be pleased to know that i still have no idea what she is. I don't mean that as an insult, i just can't wrap my head around her sheer complexity.

Everything i said about Gather Me applies to Stoneground Words, and more! She's a folk singer, but way more complex than her peers (Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell). This album has all sorts of background musicians, guitars and organ and harmonium and sax and electric bass and congas, and more, and somebody presses the gospel choir button occassionally. Her tonality and song structures are complex, even when the lyrics are borderline silly. She warbles and melismates like she's on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The best story about her is that she completely ignored the fact that the Powder Ridge Rock Festival was totally cancelled, 30,000 people showed up to buy drugs anyway, and she played for that wacked out audience through a PA powered by ice cream trucks like it was a Melanie concert.

Stoneground Words doesn't have a pocket. It has two little flaps that hold the record and 5 serrated and folded (but with a hole at the top for hanging on your wall like a calender)12x12 glossy photos of her playing guitar in the desert. It is truly strange, and since i have no familiarity with her doing regular person things i can only imagine her as a crazy New York hippie who wandered off from the bus tour of southern California and just stayed there.

But back to the music. Her singing still gives me the strangest sense of deja vu. I really don't know these songs, but i completely recognize the sound of her singing them from somewhere else. I guess we'll just have to accept it for the completely confusing mystery it is until i hear what i'm actually remembering again by chance.

I don't really know what it is, but i very much enjoy it.

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