Artist – Album: Janis Joplin - Pearl
Released: 11th
January 1971
Sounds Like: Honey
coated cigarettes. According to my sister.
It wasn't easy to decide which record to listen to and blog
about today – as well as this excellent slice of blues rock celebrating its 42nd
birthday, Vampire Weekend’s Contra was released 3 years ago to the day. That
album is a literate, summery, sort-of concept album that mashes a huge array of
genres together with intelligence and flair. In the end, I chose to plump for
the album which sounded freshest to me. For while Contra’s style may not be
exactly ten a penny nowadays, there really is no one out there making big
soulful blues rock like Pearl any more.
The album revolves around Joplin’s extraordinary vocals, a
captivating rasp that is the voice of a big-busted, whiskey swigging, tattooed
angel. Songs like Mercedes Benz and A Woman Left Lonely rely on a delicate
sweetness to her tone, whilst the likes of the Me and Bobby McGee and Cry
Baby (or the near carbon copy My
Baby) are all about the prodigious power she possessed.
Joplin died on 4th October 1970 of a heroin overdose,
meaning that Pearl was released unfinished. In fact, the vocals for now
instrumental track Buried Alive in the
Blues were due to be recorded the day that she died. Her untimely death
means that we can only wonder what she could have go on to accomplish, but the
strength of this album, as well as the posthumous U.S. number one Me and Bobby McGee, still leave an
incredible legacy.
Albumaday... rating: 8/10
1. Move
Over – 3:43
2. Cry Baby – 3:58
3. A
Woman Left Lonely – 3:29
4. Half
Moon – 3:53
5. Buried
Alive in the Blues – 2:29
6. My
Baby – 3:26
7. Me
and Bobby McGee – 4:33
8. Mercedes
Benz – 1:48
9. Trust
Me – 3:17
10. Get
It While You Can – 3:27
Listen to ‘A Woman
Left Lonely’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klhK_4evO5c
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Also released on the 11th January:
2010: Vampire Weekend - Contra
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