On
23rd Street Lullaby as on her 1993 debut,
Rumble Doll, songwriter
Patti Scialfa walks a tightrope between the optimistic, street-corner rootsy rock & roll of
Dion,
Laura Nyro,
Doc Pomus, and
Garland Jeffreys and the sober, prickly modern visions of true believers like
Melissa Etheridge,
Sam Phillips, and
Mike Ness. This is a labyrinthine album. Scialfa's characters live in the broken space between the heady promises of youth and the struggle to maintain idealism, faith, creativity, and hope when facing disappointment and compromise in adult life. It's a love letter to the fun and excess of youth, but also a look at how original aspirations play out in life. Its songs delve deep into that mystery and emerge understanding the difference between the value in bittersweet memory and the bitter trap of nostalgia.
Scialfa's musical cast includes
Marc Ribot,
Jane Scapantoni,
Clifford Carter,
Nils Lofgren,
Larry Campbell,
Willie Weeks,
Soozie Tyrell,
Lisa Lowell,
John Medeski, and husband
Bruce Springsteen. Co-produced with
Steve Jordan,
23rd Street Lullaby wears rock's classic iconography on its sleeve -- sonically, melodically, and lyrically. Its sound is full of elegant textures and slippery beats: there are doo wop choruses and moody keyboards; graceful strings; countrified strummed acoustic and edgy electric guitars; and popping, jazzed-up cadences as well as pensive spaces and pop hooks.
Scialfa's lyrics and melodies are deceptively simple and immediately accessible, but they open into swirling wells of emotion carried in the cradle of reminiscence and the heart of desire.