1990
Tracy Chapman
with Paul Kelly
Thebarton Theatre
February, 1990.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Every now and then you hear a new single that you just know is going to be a big noise. Like Rickie Lee Jones’ Chuck E’s in Love or Michelle Shocked’s Anchorage – or Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. The interchange of guitar riff and lilting vocal is captivating – and the lyric, like Paul Simon’s The Boxer, is a miniature movie so perfect that it doesn’t need a videoclip.
Fast Car, it turned out, was just one of many driving forces on Chapman’s self-titled debut album. In no time she had gone from the folky coffee houses in Boston to become the sort of Grammy award winning product that goes on the CD rack next to Graceland. Then, in the latter part of last year came her follow-up, Crossroads, and some patterns- and repetitions -began to emerge. It seemed that nothing quite matched the impact of Across the Lines or the chill from Behind the Wall, or that mix of the public and the personal that so eloquently informed the first album. Instead, a formula was starting to show and a preciousness, petulance even, that sounded like an artist trapped inside a corporation.
In saying that Tracy Chapman in concert is a performer at odds with her material, her audience and her talent, I must immediately point out that the first night crowd were little short of rapturous. But that was as much in spite of her performance as because of it. Chapman’s dislike of interviews and public statements is well-known, it has almost become a hype itself. As in the old folky days it suggests integrity and independence of mind – but on stage it registers as a lack of definition and, curiously, a lack of spirit. The single spotlight on the solo performer invites a scrutiny that she cannot bear. “All you folks think you own my life/ Demons they are on my trail” she sings in Crossroads, lyrics that echo Robert Johnson’s hell-hounded blues of the same name.
The result is not a stage presence but an absence, a heart in hiding, proffering songs loaded with apparently personal meaning and political conviction, that seem to bear little connection to their author. What is this talk about revolution , what does she really think about the Amerika she excoriates in Across the Lines ? Billy Bragg wouldn’t have missed a chance to place the work in context. I’m not talking pulpit thumping here – just a nod and wink to show the troops you are not just going through the motions.
It can only seem ironic that she was singing Freedom Now, her song for Nelson Mandela, two days before his release. Considering he had been in the slammer longer than she’s been alive, she could have been a bit more animated about his impending liberation. The uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that she was more concerned with whether she would have to drop the song from her repertoire.
That is unfair. But nevertheless, I was left feeling that, despite her new single proclaiming that she’s Born to Fight, her primary concern is with the Robin Norwood Women-Who-Love-Too-Much sentiments of This Time and For My Lover. That’s OK too but the only new songs she sang ,both unannounced, seemed to be third generation xeroxes of the same theme.
However, despite her mixed messages, there is no uncertainty about Tracy Chapman’s vocal power. She has a magnificent voice, rich, burred, with a touch of vibrato and reserves she seems to have hardly begun to call on.
When she hits her straps she can be extraordinary – on Baby Can I Hold You and Why ?, For You, Mountains of Things and, the unadorned Behind the Wall. Her guitar, affectingly simple for some, was to me simply insufficient. A band would have been nice- some of those tasty session persons that make her albums sound like six million dollars. By the time she finished her twenty song set with Talking About Revolution I am sorry to report that I thought she had strummed too much and said too little -and as for the encore, All That You Have is Your Soul, it’s not really the kind of sentiment that would have got Winnie Mandela very far.
Full marks to Tracy Chapman and her management for programming Paul Kelly and the Messengers who in a twelve song set proved for anyone left wondering, that they are one of the best bands anywhere. Drawing both from Under the Sun and last year’s So Much Water, So Close to Home, Kelly sang splendid versions of Same Old Walk, Careless, She’s a Melody and Everything’s Turning to White, his eerily truncated adaptation of Raymond Carver’s equally eerie story. Paul Kelly is a major talent and he deserves to be in an arts festival.
“Distant Strummer” The Adelaide Review, No.73, Festival edition, 1990, p.33.