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New CD is antidote to Ashlee Simpson

Friday, January 07, 2005I catch the very end of Ashlee Simpson's appearance at the Orange Bowl halftime show and wake up the next day wondering: Was the whole thing as bad as that snippet seemed to me?
Has it really come to this? An ultra-micro-managed property putting on the facsimile of a punk show, right down to the classic "A" for anarchy on the drum kit, in this utterly corporate production? And she's not singing so much as hollering? And hollering badly?
It had to be real. The audience in the stadium didn't even boo when it was over. It just sort of groaned.

And I think: This is not a very promising start to The Year in Entertainment, 2005. Maybe the lip-synching wasn't such a bad thing, compared to the alternative.
So I sit at my desk and I take the wrapper off "Shoot the Sky," Molly Thomas' new CD, and within a few minutes, everything is magically getting better. Because without knowing what I needed, I've found it: A work of wonderful artistic honesty.
If you don't remember Molly, you should. A Mississippi native, she spent some memorable years in Mobile, starting in the mid-'90s as a member of Cold Water Flat, later Slow Moses.
Afterward she continued to perform blues, rock and folk under her own name, solo and as a bandleader. Aside from songwriting and singing, she's known for her skill with the violin, guitar and piano.
She moved to Nashville in 2001, and later released an EP that showed her moving in a soulful direction somewhat comparable to Shelby Lynne; and early in 2004 she backed Matthew Ryan on tour.
Now she gives us "Shoot the Sky." I'll describe the style as straightforward contemporary singer-songwriter, as if that actually is a style. Thomas mixes in alt-country and blue-eyed soul cues, with occasional forays into rock and a good measure of her violin playing.
The album has a slightly gauzy sound, but it's not the production haze often used to cover up the limitations of weak vocalists. It's more the throwback resonance of projects like last year's Jack White-Loretta Lynn album.
There's a lot of pop out there that puts on a pretense of being upbeat but turns out to be self-pitying when you scrutinize it. (Note to self: "Quit scrutinizing pop" might be a really beneficial new year's resolution.)
What Thomas is doing here is exactly the opposite. The music is deep, gentle, flowing, often on the brink of melancholy -- but the sentiment, both in the lyrics and in their delivery, is life-affirming. As in "The Easy Side:"
"get back to the easy side/i wanna be where i don't have to hide/i wanna be where I ain't got no pride/on the easy side -- billy graham on the microphone/tellin' stories that you're not alone/to hungry people/wantin' more and more/sunday news/to get to heaven's door -- the easy side"
Thomas tells me that she plans a local CD release party in February or March; details to come. In the meantime "Shoot the Sky" is available through www.mollythomas.com for $12 plus shipping. It probably will be available soon at Satori and Bay Sound, Thomas says, though it isn't there yet.
It's an album that reflects the challenges of life, and the decision most of us continually make, to keep getting up and meeting them.
And that, folks, is the perfect cure for the blues you get when you start to think that maybe skillfully produced frauds are the best we can expect.
Lawrence F. Specker is the Mobile Register's entertainment reporter. He can be reached by phone at (251) 219-5606; by e-mail as lspecker@mobileregister.com; by fax at (251) 219-5799. Mail notices of upcoming events to him at the Register, P.O. Box 2488, Mobile, AL 36652.