Graham Reid | | <1 min read
The Webb Sisters: Calling This a Life
Best known in the wider world as part
of Leonard Cohen's touring band – the backing vocalists,
multi-instrumentalists and cartwheelers – Charley and Hattie from
Kent have at the studio desk here uber-producer, heavy-hitter and fan
Peter Asher (James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, longtime senior
vice-president at Sony). And you can guess they aren't short of
studio talent either: drummers Jay Bellerose and Russ Kunkel,
guitarist Dean Parks, organ player Neil Larsen (also in Cohen's band)
and others.
But it's a curiously unaffecting album where Eighties pop-rock (think Stevie Nicks on the title track) sits uneasily alongside material such as Baroque Thoughts and the clunking lyrics of Word That Mobilise which are grounded in Anglofolk (but as played and polished by LA session players, with Hattie's harp).
And
there is mainstream radio pop (Call This A Life, Burn)
of no fixed purpose – as well as a live take of Cohen's If It Be
Your Will with Leonard's spoken word intro before the Webbs take
it over for their earnest treatment, which seems even more odd in
this context, although does lead into a bracket of quieter songs.
I think some of these songs were on the Webb's EP available at the Cohen concert, but I was so underwhelmed by it I seem to have misplaced it. The same fate awaits this.
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