| | Chris Whitley Soft Dangerous Shores CD Chris Whitley Discography of CDs
 |
|
Our Price: $11.75 CDFor Sale Usually ships in 1-2 days
|  |
After a pair of internet-only live solo acoustic releases -- the excellent Weed and War Crime Blues -- the enigmatic Chris Whitley returns to the studio with Soft Dangerous Shores. Produced by Malcolm Burn -- who also chaired Whitley's 1991 debut Living with the Law -- the set is a deeply atmospheric, intricately textured collection of skeletally arranged expressionistic tunes that have their roots in folk, jazz, rock, and mutant, witchy blues. And unlike Living with the Law, this is a more nocturnal affair and owes no allegiance to country. Accompanied by a small band, Whitley digs deep into drones, open tunings, and edgeless dissonance. Along with his trademark guitar sound, Burn, who plays keyboards, layers in eerie sounds; they float and hover, drift and wave over and through the guitars and percussions. The shuffling snare and bass drum on "Fireroad," anchors Whitley's shapeshifting melodic frame as the National punctuates it all with a taut urgency: "I been making then making the song trespassing home/Engine of Blood, flywheel of bone/Illuminate Me, illuminate you/We could escape fireroads for two..." Feedback and Dan Whitley's electric slip into the middle to add edge and tension. On the title track, drums and loops pop in the foreground, and Whitley fingerpicks an elliptical line in near-whispered restraint as the instruments all bleed together like an opium dream. "As Day Is Long" is the only bona fide rocker on the set, and the guitars heave and hum as keyboards, drums, and sonics rip at the edges. The keyboards in "City of Women" and the rumbling, near-subsonic noise at the bottom make the tune seem truly ominous until a drifty, dreamy bottleneck slide suddenly emerges to hold down the little structure there is. On the final cut, "Breath of Shadows," Whitley plays banjo, stripping everything away from his naked, erotic poetry: "Steal me now/Into breathing rooms/under steaming oaths/til my lips can trace the shade between your thighs. As he sings, Burn feeds in a lone keyboard line, one or two notes that carry the lyrics right into the bone and marrow of the listener. Whitley has not been given proper credit for his innovative and uncompromising method of songwriting and arranging; Soft Dangerous Shores finds him at a whole different level of his craft. ~ Thom Jurek
Personnel: Chris Whiteley (vocals, guitar, banjo); Trixie Whitley (vocals); Dan Whiteley (electric guitar); Heiko Schramm (bass guitar); Mathias Macht (drums, percussion); Aaron Comess (drums).
Uncut (p.90) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[A] riot of percussive tics, synthetic textures and Eno-like ambience." Soft Dangerous Shores Music Chris Whitley Soft Dangerous Shores Songs | 1. | Fireroad (For Two) |
| 2. | Soft Dangerous Shores |
| 3. | As Day Is Long |
| 4. | Valley of the Innocents |
| 5. | City of Women |
| 6. | Times Square Machine |
| 7. | Her Furious Angels |
| 8. | Last Million Miles |
| 9. | Medicine Wheel |
| 10. | End Game Holiday |
| 11. | Breath of Shadows |
| Soft Dangerous Shores Review
GuidelinesRemember to focus your comments on Chris Whitley Soft Dangerous Shores CD. Check our review guidelines for specific details regarding customer review policy. To submit your review, please fill out the above form and click "Submit Review." A staff member will then verify your review meets our guidelines. Upon approval, your review will be published within a few days. Please do not use this form to comment on web site errors or for order related questions. If you have concerns of this nature, please contact customer service by filling out this form.
Purchase Soft Dangerous Shores CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Chris Whitley Hotel Vast Horizon CD (2003)
Soft Dangerous Shores album
$11.39
| | Lucinda Williams Live @ The Fillmore West CDs (2005) Digipak
Soft Dangerous Shores CD music
$14.89
| | Chris Whitley Weed CD (2004)
Soft Dangerous Shores music CDs
$9.79 Weed is one of two albums issued by Chris Whitley as interim offerings between Hotel Vast Horizon and his forthcoming studio outing available only at gigs or from the Messenger Records web site. This volume features solo acoustic versions of songs from his catalog while the other, War Crime Blues, contains eight new songs and three ...
| | Chris Whitley War Crimes Blues CD (2004)
Soft Dangerous Shores songs
$9.99 War Crime Blues is the second of two internet-and-gig-purchase-only albums by Chris Whitley on the Messenger label. The other is Weed, a collection of songs from earlier albums done acoustically, sans band. War Crime Blues is solo acoustic as well, but it makes a hell of a racket. Recorded completely live without overdubs of any kind, Whitley accompanies himself on bottleneck guitar and stomping board. ...
| | Chris Whitley Reiter In CD (2006)
Soft Dangerous Shores album
$11.25 One has to wonder if Reiter In is, in fact, the late Chris Whitley's last will and testament in terms of recordings. Done in the first three days of June, 2005 -- he was already ill -- this set was recorded in New York with a host of friends he called "the Bastard Club" on analogue tape. The band is large, the sound is immediate. The feel is loose, raw, dark, rocked-up, and in-your-face. Without trying to sound morbid, the feeling of death and mortality is everywhere. The word "reiter" means "horseman." ...
| | Badfinger No Dice CD (1970)
Soft Dangerous Shores CD music
$11.59
| | Mike Mainieri Wanderlust CD (1981)
Soft Dangerous Shores music CDs
$13.79
| | Santana Awakening CD (1998)
Soft Dangerous Shores songs
$9.79
| | Bluegrass Tribute To The Shins CD (2006)
Soft Dangerous Shores album
$13.29 Tributee: The Shins.
| | Sojiro Acoustic World 42 CD (2007) (Import)
$40.75 | | Eddie Hinton Very Extremely Dangerous CD (1978)
Soft Dangerous Shores CD music
$12.59 Eddie Hinton's 1978 debut came more than a decade after the kudos he received for his songwriting and his session work as a guitarist. He played guitar on countless sessions as the guitarist at the famed Muscle Shoals ...
|
|
|