Tracy Chapman - Telling Stories

With Telling Stories, her first album since 1995's New Beginnings, Tracy Chapman returns to the spare, unsentimental feel of her early work. In doing so, she recaptures some of the urgency and simple melodiousness that made her debut a soulful folk-rock classic. There's maturity here, exemplified by recurring spiritual metaphors. On "Unsung Psalm" she imagines her funeral, singing, "I'd have a halo and flowing white robes / If I live right." "Wedding Song" offers the plainspoken, devotional line, "I reach out for your hand / For you I'd don a veil." The musical arrangements, too, are pared-down, with ghostly banjo, silvery fiddle, and guitar woven into subtle drum loops. Though not as immediately captivating as her debut, Telling Stories is a focused return to form for Chapman. --Lucy O'Brien Amazon.com

Great sound

This is a great CD. Unfortunately it's one of the few Tracy Chapman CDs that you can't download off of iTunes, so you'll probably have to buy the CD itself and burn it onto your computer if you want to listen to it on an MP3 player. September 23, 2008

What can I say?

It's Tracey Chapman...great from start to finish...a little bit of everything, in true Tracey style. August 30, 2008

Not Telling Stories

Much of Tracy Chapman's music seems to work best for me when I let it creep up on me; I find myself caught by a phrase she wove into a song, or surprised by the little inflections of her voice that reveal such a depth of observation. I reach over and reset the track to hear it again, and yet another of her stories has claimed me. This is one of those albums. It's full of beautiful narratives that leave you wondering about the life behind the music. Sample Wedding Song: just exquisite blending of harmony and guitar, and such simple but profound emotion throughout. March 19, 2008

Excellent job

I received my order on time and in perfect condition. Keep up the good job! March 7, 2008

you and reality

For Tracy Chapman, 'you ... and reality' are not synonymous. Rather, the aggrieved architecture of her lyrics claims that 'there is fiction in the space between you .. and reality.'

It is precisely this habitation of the spaces in between that makes the artist's 2000 release an enduring and beguiling sucsess that repays regular revisitations. That, and her lean, sad voice, an instrument verily designed for the kind of border-line blues that come at the listener, track after track, in TELLING STORIES.

There are few certainties here, just an extraordinarily steady gaze that is set upon the eccentricities, the disconnects, and--yes--the fictions that permeate what others prefer to see as the seamlessness of life. Chapman trains her eyes upon the seams and claims, persuasively, that hers is the more truthful vision.

The instrumentation of this album are held in brilliant restraint, a decision that allows the rich and multiple textures of Chapman's voice to predominante and, finally, prevail. She wishes the stories she tells were less true or that there were an alternative location where they didn't matter at all. 'Please forgive me for wanting to know', she asks, 'does heaven have enough angels yet?'

I'm not sure, Ms. Chapman. Perhaps there is still room. September 22, 2007

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