© Adam Granger
REVIEW: GONE FOREVER, BY CURTIS AND LORETTA
Haymarket Music, HM 105
I first remember meeting Curtis and Loretta at Dulono’s in the mid-80s. They used to come there to hear the “Eclectic Brothers”. Since then, I’ve emceed dozens of festivals and shows of which they’ve been a part (primarily on the “rendezvous circuit” which they and I travel in the summer). I’ve sat stageside and listened to them for fifty hours, I’ll bet. I’ve watched them grow as musicians, and it’s been a pleasure doing so. I’ve heard Loretta become a good songwriter. I’ve watched her learn the Celtic harp, I’ve seen Curtis add and master instrument after instrument (check out his fabulous rhythm ukelele on “Smoke Smoke Smoke (That Cigarette)”, and I’ve heard them develop and hone their vocal style. A further word about that:
Duo singing leaves more space, which creates more harmonic potential than trio singing does. Curtis and Loretta make liberal use of this; it’s become perhaps their most notable trademark. They’re a couple of regular songbirds, those two, sometimes flying in synch, but more often swooping around each other in curious and ultimately fruitful aerial maneuvers. They sing stuff in ways one doesn’t expect, especially Curtis, who will often take off tramping through the melodic underbrush rather than staying on the trail. It all works very well.
I mentioned Loretta’s growth as a songwriter. The six Simonet originals on Gone Forever live nowhere near the sprawling Land of Trite Ditties about Predictible Subjects and Endless Self-Absorbed Paeans about Nothing. Loretta writes songs about stuff. Stuff and things. Stuff and things like snowmen and toasters and flying pavement and computer crashes and old blue trucks and big Chevrolets and, well, I don’t want to give it all away. Suffice it to say that things happen in Loretta’s songs. People go places; they feel sorry for themselves; they rejoice in human companionship; they do dishes; they die. Just like in real life.
Gone Forever was recorded by south Minneapolis denizen Leo Whitebird, and produced by him with Curtis and Loretta. Peter Ostroushko, Marc Anderson, Laura Sewell and Sandy Njoes play just the right amount and type of music on it.
Gone Forever is Curtis and Loretta’s fifth album, and it sounds it. It’s not a first, or even a second, album: Not in quality; not in the song selection, not in feel, not in physical design, not in the looks on their faces on the cover. Nothing about this album jumps up and down and yells, “Lookie here! We made us a album!” Everything about it says, “This is our latest; we hope you like it”.
Curtis and Loretta have become mature and comfortable in their musician skins. There is neither anything tentative nor manic on this album. It’s a very pleasant passage of fifty-four minutes and twenty-two seconds. The song selection and pacing move one comfortably from mood to mood. Gone Forever will please, enrich and soothe, not irritate, bankrupt or offend.
Haymarket Music, HM 105
I first remember meeting Curtis and Loretta at Dulono’s in the mid-80s. They used to come there to hear the “Eclectic Brothers”. Since then, I’ve emceed dozens of festivals and shows of which they’ve been a part (primarily on the “rendezvous circuit” which they and I travel in the summer). I’ve sat stageside and listened to them for fifty hours, I’ll bet. I’ve watched them grow as musicians, and it’s been a pleasure doing so. I’ve heard Loretta become a good songwriter. I’ve watched her learn the Celtic harp, I’ve seen Curtis add and master instrument after instrument (check out his fabulous rhythm ukelele on “Smoke Smoke Smoke (That Cigarette)”, and I’ve heard them develop and hone their vocal style. A further word about that:
Duo singing leaves more space, which creates more harmonic potential than trio singing does. Curtis and Loretta make liberal use of this; it’s become perhaps their most notable trademark. They’re a couple of regular songbirds, those two, sometimes flying in synch, but more often swooping around each other in curious and ultimately fruitful aerial maneuvers. They sing stuff in ways one doesn’t expect, especially Curtis, who will often take off tramping through the melodic underbrush rather than staying on the trail. It all works very well.
I mentioned Loretta’s growth as a songwriter. The six Simonet originals on Gone Forever live nowhere near the sprawling Land of Trite Ditties about Predictible Subjects and Endless Self-Absorbed Paeans about Nothing. Loretta writes songs about stuff. Stuff and things. Stuff and things like snowmen and toasters and flying pavement and computer crashes and old blue trucks and big Chevrolets and, well, I don’t want to give it all away. Suffice it to say that things happen in Loretta’s songs. People go places; they feel sorry for themselves; they rejoice in human companionship; they do dishes; they die. Just like in real life.
Gone Forever was recorded by south Minneapolis denizen Leo Whitebird, and produced by him with Curtis and Loretta. Peter Ostroushko, Marc Anderson, Laura Sewell and Sandy Njoes play just the right amount and type of music on it.
Gone Forever is Curtis and Loretta’s fifth album, and it sounds it. It’s not a first, or even a second, album: Not in quality; not in the song selection, not in feel, not in physical design, not in the looks on their faces on the cover. Nothing about this album jumps up and down and yells, “Lookie here! We made us a album!” Everything about it says, “This is our latest; we hope you like it”.
Curtis and Loretta have become mature and comfortable in their musician skins. There is neither anything tentative nor manic on this album. It’s a very pleasant passage of fifty-four minutes and twenty-two seconds. The song selection and pacing move one comfortably from mood to mood. Gone Forever will please, enrich and soothe, not irritate, bankrupt or offend.
