Jodee James, Little Birds and Quiet Places (Jodee James, 2001)

Well, the bad news is that I can't review the Jodee James CD at all decently. The hideous static crackle is, if anything, worse on the second copy, though there's some inconsistency in how the flaw manifests, especially if one experiments by trading copies, or grits one's teeth to find out just how bad it can get.

And what do I mean by that? Well, often, it does not show up the moment one puts in the album, even if one starts on a track in the middle. Instead, one hears the music one is intended to hear; a chirruppy sweet singer, mostly accompanied by a harp and a flute, although a few other instruments are credited; pretty much the most standard instruments for the softer side of Celtic. The songs are pleasant, recognizably Celtic, recognizably traditional, although, being Welsh, few of the songs are as immediately familiar as the more common Irish airs, and the language does have a different feel -- a bit more supple than Gaelic, in spite of those notorious double-ls and ch's. Jodee James sings quite competently, but does not do very much new with her singing or her arrangements. In those respects, it's strictly middle of the road.

Almost as irksome as the album-destroying static, is that in many songs, she interrupts the Welsh verses with English translations of the words. I found these jarring; this is, in fact, a habit of early traditional recordings that drives me up the wall. We find it astonishing these days that the early works of Clannad were considered revolutionary when they were new (and now are considered very standard, if very well done, fare) because they dared to sing whole songs in pure Irish Gaelic instead of translating all or most of the verses. But this within-song translation used to be common, and there's a good reason most groups have ceased to include them. For one thing, if the purpose is to preserve the songs, or record them with any authenticity, then the verses should be as they originated. If the purpose is to appeal to a chiefly English speaking audience, well, in these days of multicultural blends and wildly successful worldbeat acts, it's becoming more and more obvious that lyrics in other languages do not stop a band from garnering deserved attention.

Musically rather than ideologically, the songs treated this way are virtually all served better by including a translation in the liner notes, not within the song itself. For one, the translations have to be rough on meaning to scan or pretend to rhyme, or sound rough and clumsy to manage a literal meaning.

But then the crackle kicks in, and the merits of the album -- the relative rarity of these songs, the sweet voice, the pleasantness -- are all lost. It begins anywhere from a quarter of a song to someplace in the second song, with a small amount of minimal static (it's more likely to be a shorter span of time if one starts partway through). The static cuts across the music, and doesn't seem to be caused by a particular note or notes (as happens when the speakers are to blame -- never mind that all other albums played on the same player come through as clear as the recording quality allows).

Then it begins to build. The crackle increases in both volume and frequency, cutting across the music, then simply muffling it out. Sometimes, it becomes bad enough to cause the CD to freeze and skip on a note, though there are no skip-causing scratches on either copy of the CD. The odd thing is, if one switches to the other copy once the crackle has begun on one, the other album picks it up immediately -- even starting from the first song, which usually gets to come through clean -- which is good, as it would be one of the tracks I would favour best if I could hear it clear. One copy of the CD does seem worse than the other, but neither can be listened to tolerably for any longer than three or four songs, and that's when I'm in a static-forgiving mood.

Hmm... I've talked enough about the music itself that this may actually qualify as a review, albeit a review about why I can't write a fair review. I'm not excited enough about the bits I did hear clearly to seek her out and ask if a clean copy exists, but it did seem as if it was would be pleasant, and if the technical problem is fixed, perhaps someone else might have felt differently.