45 REVELATIONS
The new R.E.M. single almost snared it at the last minute, but I’m still going country with the Single of the Bi-Month, as I guess I’ll have to call it now. I’ve been obsessed with Baillie & The Boys all summer. The harmony arrangements on the LP are sumptuous, and Kathy Baillie’s voice is pure liquid heartbreak.
45 REVELATIONS
DEPARTMENTS
by Ken Barnes
SINGLE OF THE MONTH
The new R.E.M. single almost snared it at the last minute, but I’m still going country with the Single of the Bi-Month, as I guess I’ll have to call it now. I’ve been obsessed with Baillie & The Boys all summer. The harmony arrangements on the LP are sumptuous, and Kathy Baillie’s voice is pure liquid heartbreak. It all works to perfection on “He’s Letting Go,” a slow-building, taut and tense tale of disillusion/dissolution, very much like co-writers Pam Rose and Mary Ann Kennedy’s magnficent “Somebody Else’s Fire” (a Janie Fricke hit a couple years back). It looks flat enough on paper, but when Baillie sings “The moon is bluer than the midnight sky/He’s gonna let me go,” it truly seems like the end of the world.
Deborah Alien/” You’re The Kind Of Trouble”: After launching her bold switch from country to dance pop with a subpar pseudonymous Prince song, Allen returns to her own formidable writing talents, sounding like a Grace Jones who can sing on an edgy, passionate tour de force.