An album as unusual as
Tywanna Jo Baskette's debut cannot help but draw polarizing reactions: either you admire her childlike delivery and directness or you find it hopelessly inept.
Fancy Blue drew some attention for the sheer fact of its disarming honesty, but the songs themselves really do not stand on their own merits.
Baskette's voice itself is an acquired taste: more quivering that
Claudine Longet, more off-kilter than
Victoria Williams, and with uneven at best timbre. She does, however, take advantage of her odd sense of pitch and phrasing to bend notes and meters to her whimsy, a boon to her independence if not her craft. Sometimes the results are disastrous to
Shaggs-like degrees, as on the nursery rhyme-esque tracks "Trouble," "Valentine's Night," and the unfathomable "I Love Goat Cheese." What keeps the record from being an utter wreck, though, is the sensitive production work of multi-instrumentalist
Clay Jones, who creates curiously fascinating atmospheres behind the country-folk cuts "Pinky," "Gentle," and "Pretty Crazy Daisy." They're not enough to transcend
Baskette's childish musings about a "stupid and beautiful" cow and the names of her parents; indeed, little of this album rises to the level of legitimate listening. ~ Joseph McCombs