Mary Lee’s Corvette – Self-Titled
This one arrived in the mail as a personal recommendation from the ‘Scoe — that’s Eric Ambel, for the Lakeside impaired — who produced its eight songs, to the extent that live-to-two-track recordings are produced, anyhow. Off the bat, it was pretty clear that the main attraction here is singer Mary Lee Kortes, who comes across as a sort of slightly sweeter, less edgy Syd Straw, especially on the casually rocking leadoff track “Lonely World”.
The real gem comes a couple cuts further in. “1,000 Promises Later”, following in the footsteps of other classic tunes with “1,000” in the title (Scruffy the Cat’s “Land of 1,000 Girls”, the Bottle Rockets’ “$1,000 Car”), is a bona fide treasure, with Joe Chiofalo’s accordion gently propelling a spare acoustic arrangement that lets Kordes’ voice shine as she drifts high for the emotional reaches of the chorus and its leading line, “Here I stand holding nobody’s hand / 1,000 promises later.”
It’s all downhill from there, though that says more for the strength of the one song than for the weakness of the rest of the disc. Pretty much everything here is listenable (except perhaps “The Status With Gladys”, which is as annoying as you might expect from that cloying rhyme scheme), but the songs too often drift into overly folky territory or follow unmemorable melodic twists and turns. Still, the playing, which includes the likes of Manhattan scene stalwarts Andy York and Jon Graboff, is exemplary throughout, and it really is worth the price of admission just for that one great song.