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The Psalms

Jessi Colter

 

2017—Sony Music Entertainment.  Jessi Colter is no stranger to country music, although it has been a long time since we have heard anything from her.  She is quite the talented musician who has given us some beautiful music.  Nonetheless I have been hemming and hawing over this new album from her.  The history behind this album is quite interesting as stated in the liner notes.  It is a story that began in 1995, when author Lenny Kaye was working with Colter’s late husband Waylon Jennings on his autobiography.  As the story states, Lenny overheard Jessi playing her piano while singing various Psalms from the Bible.  Lenny was so impressed by Colter’s inspiration that he just had to record her musical interpretations of this infamous book of the Bible. First and foremost, the music on this album is purely breathtaking. I could listen to the instrumentations for days as they are quite mesmerizing.  I can certainly tell that each Psalm was taken into deep consideration as to which instruments shall accompany the passage.  There are several times in which, I am drawn away from the sophisticated melodies by Jessi’s vocals.  Granted she still has effortless lush vocals, it’s just that the harmonies are intoxicating and one could easily get lost amongst them. I understand that this is a Gospel album, but this album is a perfect example of when not to add vocals to a tune.  Perhaps, if the album was released as a dual album with vocals and without vocals it would serve more.  On the flip side, I have never heard the Psalms performed quite like this. The Psalms chosen by Jessi include Psalms 21, 151, 24, 45, 72, 73, 75, 99, 136, 114, 150 and the infamous Psalm 23. In many of these songs, Colter plays with the Psalms to create more of a lyrical message, therefore, you may find that the song does not include the entire mentioned Psalm. However, there is one major complaint that I have with the entire album—throughout the full album I can hear a great deal of background noise including shuffling of papers, bumps, breaths and even sounds made by walking to and from the microphone.  In some cases these are welcomed noises, however, in this case—it does distract the listener from the true interpretation of the message contained within this project. I will admit that Jessi is a creative genius to produce such an album like this. This album is for the sophisticated listener who truly appreciates pure elegance.  It is also for the cultivated and Bible knowing individual who can value its theme. I score it low due to it’s ambient production noise. $$-$$$

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