(As published in Brian Q. Newcomb's Syndicate ... )
Wendy James
Now Ain't the Time for Tears (DGC)
Two years after recording the amazing Velveteen with her trash-glam band Transvision Vamp, Wendy James realized she was sick of her sleazy image as a punk Madonna Ciccone and wrote Elvis Costello, whom she'd never met, an SOS letter. A few months later, she learned that E.C. had written her an entire album that, if she wanted, she could record as was. She did, and this is it. The short, fast songs make the most of James' smoky, pouty voice, and the ease with which she makes Costello's barbed wordplay her own suggests a future in acting. But the long, slow ones, with their formal challenges and grand statements of self-realization, make demands that no ex-punk Madonna can easily live up to. Maybe that's the risk an independence-seeking woman runs when relying a hundred percent on a man to tell her story for her. And maybe the lone short slow one, "Basement Kiss" (as fine a performance as anything James recorded with Transvision Vamp) suggests such risks can nevertheless pay off.
Wendy James
Now Ain't the Time for Tears (DGC)
Two years after recording the amazing Velveteen with her trash-glam band Transvision Vamp, Wendy James realized she was sick of her sleazy image as a punk Madonna Ciccone and wrote Elvis Costello, whom she'd never met, an SOS letter. A few months later, she learned that E.C. had written her an entire album that, if she wanted, she could record as was. She did, and this is it. The short, fast songs make the most of James' smoky, pouty voice, and the ease with which she makes Costello's barbed wordplay her own suggests a future in acting. But the long, slow ones, with their formal challenges and grand statements of self-realization, make demands that no ex-punk Madonna can easily live up to. Maybe that's the risk an independence-seeking woman runs when relying a hundred percent on a man to tell her story for her. And maybe the lone short slow one, "Basement Kiss" (as fine a performance as anything James recorded with Transvision Vamp) suggests such risks can nevertheless pay off.
