Feature Article/Interview - Trusting the Force: Into the Heart of Blue
Alert - An Interview with Anjani Thomas
By Douglas Heselgrave
Blue Alert is a beguiling disc. Sometimes it's like a Rubik's cube that
just has to find the right combination, an appropriate spinning of
colors and lining up of tones, to reveal itself to the listener. Other
times, it's more like a Chinese puzzle box where each subsequent layer,
once penetrated and peeled away, tells a story that previously had
eluded the ear. During one experience, the disc sounded like roses cast
off and carefully preserved as a kindness from composer to singer, a
passing of the torch, a map written in Hieroglyphs from word to sound, a
marrying of lyric and melody to create something else. Blue Alert is an
enigma. Deceptively smooth on the surface, one can imagine Anjani in a
ballroom, a lounge, a place where im****tant people go to hear music. At
these moments, Blue Alert is genteel and polished, popular art in a
tuxedo. Then, it is none of those things. It is the harp seducing the
ear at the gates of Hell, a siren song luring sailors off their
***tant-charted courses to ruination. Then a word, a phrase, a
complementary tone, an invocation calls the path of song back from the
darkness to somewhere in between midnight and dawn. Closing time. The
end of the evening, as all of the patrons file out of the dance hall,
with only a few stragglers, reflectively patient, left with nowhere else
to go. At that moment, freed from expectation, the singer finally can
relax. The singer finally can open her soul. It is here, in this mood,
that Blue Alert finds its mettle, and its gifts, at long last, can
become manifest.
It takes a hell of a lot of skill and resolve to make music that is this
profound sound so effortless. Again, it's deceptive. A quick tour of the
local record stores finds Blue Alert filed in different corners. It is
labeled "adult contem****ary" in one and dubbed "easy listening" in
another. Adult, it is, and contem****ary it may be, at least in this
precise moment, but time probably will prove it to be ageless. Easy
listening it is not. No more than Pergolesi's Stabat Mater or a Mozart
aria can be considered easy listening. Blue Alert is calm and controlled
at one level -- Diana Krall with better lyrics -- but it bristles and
prods and flays underneath. Play Blue Alert over and over; it is a
different record every time. Try and find the center of Blue Alert, and
it's not there -- at least not for any complete or regularly scheduled
viewing on demand. It is light and ephemeral. It is relaxing. Anjani
offers the lyrics with the voice of an angel, and they threaten to
subside in the background. The sound experience could stay there -- the
perfect accompaniment to a dinner party -- then a phrase, a suggestion
threatens and cajoles. Dinner stops. Everyone listens, remembering
something unspoken. Anjani is seer and interpreter of the insistent
shapes beyond the words.
Blue Alert is a gift in a different way than any of the other
interpretations or albums of cover versions of Leonard Cohen's songs
have been. Anjani is no Jennifer Warnes. Warnes made the songs
accessible, vital, and im****tant for a new generation when she released
Famous Blue Raincoat, nearly 20 years ago. She dressed the songs in a
new way and sang them beautifully, but nothing in her approach pulled
the listener deeper into Cohen's world. The private dramas, inner doors,
and final four-in-the-morning resolutions were decorated rather than
eviscerated. No bitter frost scraped away. No flowers planted in the
soil of pain and disappointment.
This is an excerpt. To read the complete article, please visit:
http://www.musicbox-online.com/interviews/anjani-thomas-2007.html
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