LisaKellyMusic

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CD Review by Bob Harvey, Jefferson Airplane founding member / Thursday, March 01 , 2007

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Bob Harvey

I’ve found that over production is the biggest trap any recording musician call fall into.

Lisa Kelly’s album “Into the Fire” is the perfect balance of production that does its job. It simply acts as the vehicle for the music and the message. “Into the Fire” is wonderfully lean and sparse. Lisa’s voice is clean, clear and compelling. Her writing is like a musical journal of her
life experiences and what she feels about her journey - what she has seen and felt about the world around her.

(1)   “Chistmas Eve on the Moon” is a snap shot of a moment in time, when everything in her life was carrying her to a new high, where she felt
        completely happy and in harmony with her world and with the feelings of True Love and the need to share those feelings with her audience.

(2)   “My Mandolin” is a very happy and joyous love song – an ode to a friend and companion who has carried her through painful moments of    loss and tearful misdirection, a friend who has always brought her back to the stabilizing force of the music that has given her direction    and healing. “Till the end – me and my mandolin.”

(3)   “Season” paints a beautiful backdrop for memories of painful moments of closing a chapter in her life, leaving someone who has been close,
        knowing that the person and the shared season will be missed – but feeling a need to move on.

(4)   What if” is powerful. It asks the questions that every thinking person should be asking themselves in the tumultuous times in which we live.
       In my mind, it also asks the question of why our society and its emphasis on higher education and hard work have not erased the gap between wealth and poverty. But then, what if man in the next thousand years could learn, somehow, to make peace with our planet and with our neighbors. “What if one word in one song could stop this ship from sinking?"

(5)   “Closer” – a poignant portrait of the dreams and yearnings that the music of our youth paints in our minds. Dreams that can be used to build our lives, with a foundation of concentrated effort that can change the fantasies of youth into a meaningful life that remakes us into    whatever we   believe is possible – whatever will bring us closer to our dreams.

(6)   “Into the Fire” – A rollicking and thoroughly fast rolling look back at the growing pains and burning desire to be free of childhood’s restraints.
        A need to run towards what a teenager sees as light, but which often turns out to be an inferno of painful learning – the hard way. And with every step on that path, still maintaining the right to be lost and even to leap into the fire and most of all the right to find her own way out of the fire, and live to write about it.

(7)   “I need No Reason” is the essence and the power of loving unconditionally, giving life and then getting it back as a
        joyous celebration that love for a child can bring.

(8)   “Home” – The eternal yearning to return, or simply to find the place that fulfills the yearning – reaching for the ‘end of November’ – a place of dreams the things that are real – as real as going home – as real as getting older - as real as the ability to believe in your destiny that always seems to be someplace else – someplace warm – dreams are the things that are real – at the end of November.

(9)   “I heard you Say” – A surrealistic word collage – free form images that tumble rhythmically under the spell of the lovely mandolin’s articulation and the plaintiff wail of the blues harp – a song that flies on an ‘angel’s wings.’ - ‘marching to the beat of a different drum’ –       ‘sometimes things are better left unspoken’ – ‘the price you pay – for loving someone with a hearts that broken’.

(10) “Where Ya Goin’ Now?” – What will you do when you get there? Questioning the desire to run – the need for fulfillment when nothing seems to  satisfy the quest for answers and meaning that always seems to be an external pot of gold, just out of reach and out of time.

(11) “Changing” – lyrics that implant a staccato of mood filled images of leaving – flying – the lost feeling that comes from having no specific destination crying for understanding – pain for the darkness and dieing felt around you – falling – dreaming while awake – sleeping –    yearning –  wanting to understand the yearning to be part of everything.

(12)   “My Love” – A love ballad that rides on the crest of the mandolin entwined with tasty lead guitar.

(13)   “Kathy’s House” – A hard driving, fun look back at a favorite place to hang out and let it all hang out. A place where cares are left at the    door and the party is always on.

San Mateo County Times / Monday, June 26, 2006

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Angelica's Bistro / Review

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