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Old 04-11-2022, 07:15 PM   #11 (permalink)
Trollheart
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Love Scenes - Beverley Craven - 1993 (Epic)


This album I found all the more disappointing considering her stunning debut three years previous, which gave her a huge hit single in “Promise Me” and made people take notice of her. Possibly due to that, the ever-awkward second album syndrome, Love Scenes is a big let-down. Hardly prolific, Craven has only released a total of five full albums in almost twenty years, and it would be six more years before her third was completed. A lot of this has to do with the birth of her children, and you can't blame any mother for taking time off to make sure she shares the golden years with her kids, but her music certainly seems to have suffered from the hiatus, and any hope she had of making it big soon disappeared. Music fans are a fickle and impatient lot, and you can't expect (most of) them to wait six years between albums - even three is asking a lot, especially following a debut.

But I had enjoyed that self-titled first album a lot, even if much of it is somewhat indulgent and more than a little depressing. I thought a new star might have arisen on the horizon, and perhaps she would have shone a lot brighter and more powerfully had she followed up her debut more quickly, and with a stronger second album. As it is, what we have is a lot of rehash from the first, with some it has to be said pretty dire tracks, a lot of filler and one or two decent songs.

“Meh”, say I.

It opens, in fairness, with one of the better tracks, the title in fact. It's a nice guitar and string-driven semi-ballad with a good hint of bitterness in it, as Bev sings ”You're playing love scenes without me/ And she's got my role.” It's quite similar in pace and melody to her huge hit “Promise me”, and as this is one of the better tracks on the album, that's really not good. If you can't write new material without recycling your better songs, it's a bad start. Second track “Love is the Light” is another ballad, though this time a full one. This is another shortcoming with Craven's material. She always risked her music being forced into the “easy listening” category (surely death for any emerging artist!) due to the overpreponderance of ballads on her albums - her debut had five out of a total ten - (so that's half, for those of you as bad at maths as me) and the opening of the album does little to dispell this practice, despite a spirited guitar solo halfway through the song.

The shining diamond on this album is the utterly amazing “Hope”, which unbelievably was not chosen for release as a single. A tender, touching, tragic ballad, it focusses not on love and men, but the wrongs in the world, the injustices and the crimes against humanity practiced on a daily basis, often closer to home than we would wish to admit. Opening lines ”The martyrs of democracy/ Are lying in the streets/ People with the power/ Will kill to keep the peace” lay down the marker right away, as a lonely but effective piano is slowly joined by slowly-building strings, as a sad bell of doom tolls in the background. The strings surge on the back of powerful drums as the song increases in intensity, and this is, without question, one of the finest songs ever written by Beverley Craven, indeed, one of the finest songs on democracy and human rights ever recorded, and it should be far better known than it is.

Unfortunately after that it's pretty much downhill for the rest of the album. “Look No Further” is a pretty awful reggae-styled song in the vein of “You're Not the First” from the debut, while “Mollie's Song”, written for her daughter is touching but I prefer Phil Lynott's “Growing Up”. Still, you can't really pick too much fault with an artiste when they write a song for their children, and it's not a bad song, but doesn't stand out: perhaps it's a little overindulgent, though as I say we'll allow her that indulgence. Hey, at least it isn't “Kathleen!”

The ballads continue with “In Those Days”, more acoustic piano and to be fair Craven has a lovely clear and almost spiritual voice, even if it does often stray into Judie Tzuke territory. There's a nice touch with the addition of what sounds like uileann pipes, and the song is a nice look back to her childhood, while digital piano abounds on “Feels Like the First Time” (not, sadly, a cover of the stomping Foreigner song!), a ballad that owes much of its melody to “Castle in the Clouds” from her first album, and then she attempts - rather unsuccessfully in my opinion - to fuse reggae and rock stylings with a good slice of jazz on the first real uptempo number, “Blind Faith”. It's a worthy effort, but I think she's trying to step too far away from what she's best at here, and it comes across as too earnest, a real “look at me, I can rock!” song. And sadly, no Bev, you can't, not really.

There's not much left to say really after that. Although far from perfect, “Blind Faith” does come as a welcome break in the ballads, but then we're right back into weepy territory with “Lost Without You”, and the album ends with an unlikely cover of ABBA's “The Winner Takes It All”. One of my favourite songs from them, I'll never forgive her for reggae-ing it up! It's strangely prophetic really, as this album really didn't win her any new fans, any hits or any continued success, and when she took a six-year break - twice the length between her debut and this - before her third album, the writing really was on the wall.

After a successful and impressive debut, Beverley made the decision to put her children before her career. You can't argue that kind of decision - so often it's the other way around - and paid the expected price. After the last strains of “Promise Me” had faded into the background, people forgot her and although her last album was released in 2009, for most people she'll forever be classed as a one-hit wonder, proving the old adage that if you stand still, the world moves on without you.

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Scenes
2. Love is the Light
3. Hope
4. Look No Further
5. Mollie's Song
6. In Those Days
7. Feels Like the First Time
8. Blind Faith
9. Lost Without You
10. The Winner Takes It All
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