Yeah, that guy would have had nothing to do with this album. Sutton Foster is a Tony Award-winning actress who's appeared exclusively in musicals and whose first album, Wish, consists of covers of such tunes and a some others. It accomplishes many things, but rawkin! is not among them. So I'll let him listen to something else later. Foster doesn't shy from her bread and butter, including the Broadway show tunes like "Warm All Over" and a minute-long slice of "Oklahoma!" But she also covers singer-songwriter numbers like John Denver's "Sunshine on my Shoulder" and Patty Griffin's "Nobody's Cryin'."
She definitely brings that musical-actress sensibility to all of the album's songs, but she also deftly handles the ones that require subtlety and intimacy, which is not always possible when trying to reach the people in the balcony. The title captures the album's theme -- sometimes wishing to be in a different place, sometimes wishing for a different outcome to a situation, sometimes for a different experience in the place of the one she's got at hand, and Foster is able to convey that theme through them all quite well. It even works in "Air Conditioner," a comedic number about what kind of appliance a gentleman will need to have in his home to gain her attentions.
I don't try to pretend ol' kerrrangggg boy doesn't exist or that he has nothing to say about what music I still listen to, but albums like Wish make me glad he doesn't have the last word all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment