Amy Rigby
The Sugar Tree (Koch)
by Marc Hirsh
Amy Rigby
The Sugar Tree (Koch)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, 2002
I once had the distinct pleasure of sitting pretty much literally at Amy Rigby's feet as she performed "Magicians." It was a new song at the time; Amy may in fact have just written it, since her band sat it out, leaving just her and an acoustic guitar. Nobody in the audience had heard it before but we were happy to listen, since Amy Rigby's not really the type of artist that has hits to cheer for (a situation with benefits as well as drawbacks). And the song, which captures the last moment of the night (or relationship, if you're so inclined) when nothing exists but two people, was beautiful and devastating. When she finished to enthusiastic applause, all I could think to say, knowing that I was close enough that she would hear me, was "Very nice."
A massive understatement in reference to that performance, my comment is, however, a fair assessment of the full arrangement that appears midway through The Sugar Tree, which doesn't fully capture the song's majesty. And the strangest thing about it, and the most egregious flaw recurring throughout the entire album, is Amy's voice, which is subjected to so much double-tracking and effects and (most problematic) what sounds to be inexplicable self-restraint that you start to wonder just where she actually is. Amy is such a clear communicator, accessing such an wide range of emotions with unsettling directness, that anything that gets in the way is a liability.
There is good news, though, in that there's plenty for Amy's vocals to work against, which makes The Sugar Tree a complete switcheroo from 1998's wonderful Middlescence . Amy's band is fired up and ready, not to mention a touch more stylistically consistent; veer though they might from the bouncy 1960s-style girl-group pop of "Better Stay Gone" to the New Orleans stomp of "If You Won't Hang Around" by way of the C&W propulsion of "Rode Hard," the record maintains a strong sense of sonic cohesion throughout.
Best of all, when Amy's on, songwriting-wise, she's as terrific as ever. "Stop Showing Up In My Dreams" is an almost perfect garage-rock song; drop the quivery guitar and even the arrangement is dead-on, right down to the guitar solo (the marvelously hallucinogenic lyric, in which Amy, dazed by her man leaving, ends up as a half-crazed bellhop, is another story altogether). "Cynically Yours" festoons the purloined skeleton of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" with a sigh of utter resignation, the sound of two tired people sharing the only wedding vows that they know in their hearts that they can keep (it starts, "You know I love you one hundred percent/Of the amount I'm capable of loving you...," and then drops like a stone from there). Best of all is the anthemic "Balls," in which Amy confronts the rat-bastard who keeps breaking her heart without really telling him to take a hike. The perfectly realized second verse surely deserves some sort of award; the setup is hysterical, but the payoff rhyme clinches not just the joke but the point, raising the stakes of both in the process.
The problem, as I see it, is that, having heard many of these songs in a live setting, I know that they all, to a song, benefit from simpler arrangements, an uncluttered vocal sound and a more confident Amy. Unlike the rest of her astonishing oeuvre, The Sugar Tree sounds as though it's made a few concessions, from the inclusion of, let's face it, a few sappy tunes (certainly "Angel After Hours" and probably "Happy For You" as well) to the occasional suppression of personality in the name of presentability (the closer, "Sleeping With The Moon" is lovely but not heartbreaking, a first for her). Defeat, however, is one she's not willing to make just quite yet.