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Chris Lee, Plays & Sings Torch’d Songs, Charivari Hymns & Oriki Blue-Marche

The production has an overt sense of confidence: some tracks are multi-layered, with relaxed horns, vocal harmonies, extra keyboards or guitar; others are strong and simple, just bass, guitar and Lee’s voice. And God, that voice: often compared to Jeff Buckley, Al Green or Nick Drake, Lee’s singing is masterfully sincere, at once longing and grateful, wistful and pained. ROSECRANS BALDWIN reviews.

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Rosecrans Baldwin
TMN Co-Editor in Chief Rosecrans Baldwin lives in Paris, France. He co-founded The Morning News with Andrew Womack in 1999 and has been waking up at 6 a.m. ever since. His personal web site is useless. Someday his ashes will be tossed off Mount Desert Island. His stories have appeared in The New York Times, New York, The Nation, NPR’s All Things Considered, and elsewhere. He does not have a beard.
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originally published in neumu

Plays & Sings Torch’d Songs, Charivari Hymns & Oriki Blue-Marche, which Chris Lee co-produced with Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, shows more maturity and self-assurance than Lee’s self-titled debut of last year (on Misra Records). The production has an overt sense of confidence: some tracks are multi-layered, with relaxed horns, vocal harmonies, extra keyboards or guitar; others are strong and simple, just bass, guitar and Lee’s voice.

And God, that voice: often compared to Jeff Buckley, Al Green or Nick Drake, Lee’s singing is masterfully sincere, at once longing and grateful, wistful and pained. The best way I can describe his voice is that it has no affectation; if it’s possible to sing honestly and richly, in both tone and lyrics, Lee’s found it.

Yet despite his talents in singing and songwriting, it’s not easy to define Lee within a single genre, and I want to. When I’m telling people about the album, I want to say, here, try this, you’ll love it, it sounds exactly like _______. Unfortunately, no one fits the blank. There are suggestions of his history in the independent scene and many nods to his Southern heritage. I could describe him as ‘American,’ but what does that say? Tracing a heritage back to the Beach Boys and Stevie Wonder, his songs are smart and popular: sad, relaxed melodies, hooking choruses, bridges transforming into strange, polished passages.

After people hear this album, I ask them how they’d describe it. The most popular response has been ‘Good ol’-fashioned songwriting.’ Getting past the nostalgic connotation, it’s not a bad term—it means the songs are pleasurable to listen to, they move and involve us emotionally, they surprise us and give us a place to rest. Achieving these ambitions proves Lee is good; doing it his own way is a step toward greatness.

—Published September 19, 2001