Whoospankeroo, me to you, let’s like blowing on a curly party favor get one thing straight: Tanya Tucker is the reason brassy rhymes with sassy, and that lassie’s got ’em brassy as any metallurgical monkey, primatey. It may be a man’s world, but Claire O. and Sister T done like double-timing doughboys tromped all over it. Claire has been known to fumble her umbrella when it was rainin’ men, and hates like ball bearings in bubble gum to be a gender offender, but Frankly (which, if memory serves I’ll have something pink and fizzy, is to say all bluster, no muster) T and O have unwound a whimpering wake of snubbed bubbas in our time, which is whenever we above-the-spillway please. O the hu-men-ity.
But I skew, and must renew the purview of my review.
Like a busty bodice in a boomtown bordello, Claire is rent. My ponderation yields bifurcation. On one discreetly lotioned hand, the Complicated backing music is like a premier steer at the county fair: first-class, neatly neutered, and professionally executed. On the other needs-some-Go-Jo hand, Tanya’s vocals are fish-cleaning-paper gutsy. The result? Okey-dokey karaoke. Ain’t noDepressionbody gonna shuck shekels for that. Dropping like rocks a name, Claire once had dinner with producer Gregg Brown, hopes like a fat diamond to do two, but before the spatula-dancers hari-kari the calamari, she will lemon twist Gregg’s ear and say why oh why oh spells yo-yo won’t you let Tanya sing over music as naughty as she is, which is very-much-in-need-of-spanking-indeed? Why all the string-y thingies? When the Tanya train jumps the tracks to chase down a Delbert McLinton “Love Thing”, why keep the slide guitar clickety-track on the rails? Just once, disconnect the line with which the studio dudios phone in their quickety-split licks, dial up the Scorchers, hose down what you don’t want melted, and let T be nas-T. In the mean-like-an-overdrawn-she-badger-time, Claire is reduced to dispersing disparate discourse:
After hearing the word in “Love Thing”, Claire wonders: If he had survived the crash, would he be Cowboy Copacetic?
Lo-fi backing vocals on “I Don’t Believe That’s How You Feel”: positively Beck-oning!
Paging like a book Rickie Lee not Lake Jones: Your “Chuck E’s In Love” riff has been located, bent a bit, but that’s it all right, in “What Your Love Does For Me”.
Let me relieve a peeve: It’s Tanya as in ya hide, not Tanya as in on ya; first A’s flatter than Alan Jackson’s affect.
And with that, Claire repairs to repair her bodice. Got so cranky I unstuck my lipstick.
