Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance (CD)

All Music Guide

The more she records the more she becomes a cipher. Rachael Yamagata's 2003 selftitled EP was greeted by accolades from oftenlazy critics seeking to contextualize and consign its musical references to a tidy pop cult box. But somewhere in that mix of six lovehaunted songs, the record, and its creator, remained elusive, slipping away before perception could give way to actual definition. Happenstance is Ms. Yamagata's debut long player; it is a logical and delightful followup. It features 13 tracks (plus an uncredited surprise) that are either selfpenned or written in collaboration with producer John Alagian (John Mayer, Josh Kelly) and mentor/guitarist Kevin Salem among others. The cuts Worn Me Down, and Reason Why carry over but they have been completely rearranged and rerecorded. It is an unabashedly lush and deeply textured pop record that makes no apologies for its radiofriendliness or its near baroque pop adornments. And it shouldn'tafter all don't we need good music on the radio?... The immense care taken with this album is reflected in its elegance to be sure, but also in its willingness to go overreach in terms of emotion or execution (the string arrangements are wonderfully irreverent if not excessive). Ms. Yamagata's voice is full of elliptical slide and slurs, it demures and attacks, it swoops and croons and whispers and looks for the crack in a lyric in order to dig out its depth. One can hear that same quality in vocalists such as John Martyn, Billie Holiday, the young Rod Stewart, Dinah Washington, Maggie Bell and Jeff Buckley. That context embodies within it a certain kind of approach, one that fuses grace with grit, and passion with pathos to be sure, but also the slow, erotic burn of control and restraint, where heartache becomes the basket in which everything else is carried through the throat and is given unvarnished utterance in the phrasing, becoming something that lies just beyond the scope of the sung words; it points not out, but down and in. In its grain is the pastoral languor of a summer afternoon combined with the emotional intensity of a gleaming stiletto opening a vein with determined desperation. The similarity here is in quality of performance, not "sameness." We can hear traces of her influences to be sure, but these are woven into a fabric that serves the song, not the singer. Read more Less