Shelby Lynne "Just A Little Lovin'" (Lost Highway)
I can't decide if Lynne's version of "I Only Want To Be With You" is too "American Idol" or too Norah Jones. Which is another way of saying that it's either too vanilla (in that "ballad night" way) or, well, too vanilla (in that "jazzily feminine" way). The song temporarily spoils the mood of Just A Little Lovin', but its counter-intuitive musical arrangement isn't the problem; no, my beef is that Lynne can't hide the fact that she's supremely conscious of her own vocal. I guess it had to be so; Dusty Springfield -- the inspiration for this 10-song album -- knocked that melody out of the park. Lynne really had two choices: Do the song without trying to match Dusty's exuberance, or leave it off the album. Oh well. Her minimalist approach is better applied to a couple of Bacharach/David tunes: "Anyone Who Had A Heart" communicates pure yearning, but with almost zero desperation; and similarly, "The Look Of Love" only implies a deeply sensuous relationship instead of putting it on full display. And that lack of overt heat makes sense -- Springfield was great at enclosing her fire in some ice; Lynne's trick, at least on this disc, is the act of exercising a complete mastery over the edgy side of her femininity. Anyway, the most obvious comparison point seems to be Chan Marshall and her laid-back Cat Power covers of soul hits, but when I hear Lynne do her airy, timeless, no-frills takes on "Breakfast In Bed" and "Just A Little Lovin'," I'm not yearning for indie-rock quirks; I'm wondering what it would've sounded like to turn over the production to a Voodoo-era J.Dilla instead of Phil Ramone.
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