A Few Small Affairs – Colvin Tips Her Hat To Her Favourites

From bar bands as a teenager, to 94s Cover Girl, to every major studio album and tour since, Colvin has maintained her love of interpretation. Uncovered is a timely reminder of her debt to the artists that fired, and continue to fire, her own creative spark. She remains one of the few artists that openly acknowledge the fact that she’s still a fan, and whilst there are few surprises in the choices made on Uncovered, there’s no doubting her passion for the songs.

The majority of the tracks mirror her acoustic-only presentation of the last few tours (certainly in the UK, at least). Minimal accompaniment, in the beat of a guitar body or a keening pedal steel, or the hushed backing vocal of a friend (and it’s not bad when you can call on David Crosby to do so, as she has here on Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street’), makes Uncovered more of a Sunday morning coming down record than a Saturday night on the town affair. It’s pitched just right then; who do you turn to on Sunday morning if it isn’t your old favourites?

Springsteen’s ‘Tougher Than The Rest’ is beautifully stripped down, Colvin finding the fragility behind the swagger. The aforementioned ‘Baker Street’ morphs from mid-tempo sax-pop to a slow, swampy lament, languid with sticky heat and shimmering, one-horse town dust. Standout track ‘I Used To Be A King’ takes Nash’s ode to Joni, expands its nostalgic reference points and heightens its reflective qualities – the words are a perfect foil for Colvin’s expressive voice and open tunings.

I said there were few surprises, but one of them is her version of the soul ballad made famous by Brenton Wood, ‘Gimme A Little Sign’. Marc Cohn offers vocal additions to a song strong with a Memphis/Nashville crossover vibe. It’s light and (relatively) frothy compared with the surrounding numbers, and follows a brilliantly different ‘Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away’, the military march and gospel-funk of Wonder’s original becoming a back-porch ruminative in Colvin’s careful hands. Robertson’s ‘Acadian Driftwood’ remains true to the spirit of The Band, only Levon’s steady beat forgotten, but replaced with her sure hand on the rhythm tiller, colouring in the spaces as she’s done with her guitar for 20 years plus.

It’s difficult to know how CCR’s ‘Lodi’ could be covered badly and Colvin does it full credit without perhaps adding much to its legacy – the man from the magazine would not be unhappy. Two of the best are left to last; Robert Earl Keen’s ‘Not A Drop Of Rain’ is a finger-picked beauty that would have slotted in nicely on Colvin’s debut Steady On and highlights Keen’s way with a turn of phrase. ’Til I Get It Right’ is a hop, skip and small step away from Tammy’s original, sounding both Country enough for the tasselled-boots brigade and folk enough for the coffee-shop denizens.

There’s only one slight aberration, itself a surprise given Colvin’s on-the-record love for the writing of Neil Finn and her past renditions of his catalogue. Crowded House’s ‘Private Universe’ canters along but loses all the atmospherics that bind the original, coming across as slightly forced.

There are two ways to approach a cover. You can replicate the original in your own personal homage, or alter it radically enough that it bears little resemblance save the core melody and lyric. Or, if you’re Shawn Colvin, you can apply to it a lifetime’s love and delight in other people’s musicality and add a soupçon of your own, such that had the listener no prior knowledge or history of the original, they might consider it one of her own. No greater praise required; it’s another fine turn from one of our dearest songwriters. We can only hope that, with this set fully out of her system, the space left can be filled with new material of her own.