Suzanne Vega

Lover, Beloved: Songs From An Evening With Carson McCullers

COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP

In which Vega channels the author who obsesses her.

Songs from Vega’s 2011 ‘musical play’ Carson McCullers Talks About Love are now transformed for an album where she inhabits the Southern gothic scribbler. Opener Carson’s Blues is ironic, amused, a speakeasy walking blues with blowsy trombone and literate lyrics, while New York Is My Destination is airy, finger-snapping jazz. McCullers’ love life is tackled in sombre Instant Of The Hour After (“How I love you… how I loathe you/You’re not as drunk as you pretend”) and the gorgeous rock of We Of Me, about her cheery ménage à trois. But more earnest moments edge emptily close to Sondheim (the influence of Vega‘s co-writer, composer Duncan Sheik?); she is more touching when darkly funny, as in The Ballad Of Miss Amelia: sleazy, chatty, mixing chanson with a syncopation not unlike (oh man) Macavity from Cats. It’s a thin line ’twixt musical play and musical.