Description
Although Sylvie Simmons’s life has revolved around music, she came to making, or at least releasing her own, late in life. She only released her debut record, the critically acclaimed Sylvie, in 2014. For decades though, she’s been a highly respected rock journalist who has published biographies of Neil Young, Serge Gainsborough, Debbie Harry, and Leonard Cohen.
Working with producer Howe Gelb (Giant Sand), Sylvie has drawn on these powers of insight and her wide-ranging influences to create a lovely new album, Blue on Blue. Sylvie plays the ukulele (a custom-made ukulele, at that), which gives Blue on Blue a unique sound, especially when combined with Gelb’s keyboard style, which has definite elements of jazz sound. Other contributors bring guitars (sometimes twangy) and bass to complete the music.
Blue on Blue is very much a singer-songwriter album; its main attraction is Simmons’s lyrics. She acknowledges that her work with Leonard Cohen affected her development as a lyricist, teaching her that “that it’s possible to have two opposing ideas in your head at the same time.”
Like Leonard Cohen, Simmons finds the beautiful, the joyful, even the sacred, in the dark and profane. Her English-accented, somewhat fragile voice differs greatly from Cohen’s almost gothic intonation, but the similarity is there. Blue on Blue is deep, powerful stuff, honest, brave, and unflinching, poetic and lyrical.
