The Body Acoustic

by

Cyndi Lauper

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With her latest release, the stripped-down THE BODY ACOUSTIC, Cyndi Lauper continues to reinvent herself and relaunch her stalled career. Starting with 2003's AT LAST, both Lauper and her label have been trying to make people forget that she was the Girl Who Just Wanted To Have Fun, and instead recast her as a serious singer/songwriter. THE BODY ACOUSTIC does a good job in advancing this goal....stripped down to an acoustic setting, Lauper's lyrics are at the forefront like never before, while her voice just shines. A prime example is the opening cut, the rollicking "Money Changes Everything." One of the key tracks off of Lauper's SHE'S SO UNUSUAL debut, the song's edgy new-wave groove has been replaced with a stomping alt-country one. Amid handclaps and harmonica, this song about true friends and fame (and maybe, just maybe, record company politics) takes on a totally different vibe twenty-two years down the road; you can just hear the experience and hard-won knowledge in Lauper's voice as she sings the lines "They shake your hand and they smile/And they buy you a drink/They say we'll be your friends/We'll stick with you until the end/Ah but everybody's only/Looking out for themselves." Still a true winner! "All Through The Night" has a quiet elegance to it, and could have done very nicely on it's own without Shaggy's rasta rap, which seems calculated and tacked on at the last minute for the guest star x-factor. "Time After Time" is probably one of the most beautiful ballads of the last 45 years, and it's hard to imagine Lauper improving upon the original, but she does just that. Presented here as a duet with Sarah McLachlan, the track is even more delicate and lovely than the first time around. Once again, it seems as if Lauper (and McLachlan for that matter!) is able to draw from years of experience now, and infuses the cut with all that knowledge, pain and insight. I don't use the word "masterpiece" very often, but this is one time when it truly fits! "She Bop" is one of the tracks that most benefits from THE BODY ACOUSTIC's starker arrangements. Devoid of the frantic pace and synth-heavy tempo of the original, this ode to that greatest of taboos (for those of you who've been in a coma the last 23 years.....that would be self-pleasuring!!) takes on a more intimate, almost pleading, vibe, reaching it's zenith with a line that pretty much got buried in the original version's mix ("I bop...you bop...a...they bop/Be bop...be bop...a...lu...she bop/I hope He will understand"). The whistling is also a nice touch. VERY cool! From here we segue into the disc's two new tracks, the sublime "Above The Clouds" and the emotional "I'll Be Your River." "Above The Clouds" (written for Lauper's young son) has a muted quality to it, which is actually a good thing...it allows both Lauper's heartfelt vocal and Jeff Beck's tasteful guitar to absolutely sparkle. "I'll Be Your River", a soul-tinged torch ballad for Lauper's husband, is a mix of fear, heat, yearning, support, devotion and trepidation....in other words, it covers all the bases of love and commitment, much like a real relationship. Lauper has rarely sounded so soulful and earthy, and the lyrics are both touching and painful ("Here stands a fortress built with great walls of silence/Ready to crumble at the slightest word/Finding the right one is becoming a science/I'd like to scream but I ain't gonna be heard"). Yet, in the end, Lauper lets us know that, even with all the pain and work and uncertainty, it just might be worth it after all ("What if all these fears/That we both buy into/Melt away and disappear"). Lovely! The thing that becomes most apparent upon hearing these two tracks is that it's time for Lauper to get in the studio and record a full album of new original material: between these two tracks and a number of the lost SHINE cuts, she's writing some of the best songs of her career. I've always felt that "Sisters Of Avalon" never got it's just dues, in large part due to record company politics (Lauper's label had pretty much written her off by the time the album of the same name came out in 1997). There's a pulsating, driving energy to the song that's still evident in this more unadorned version, and Lauper's vocals soar, particularly on the boarderline rapped bridge ("They brought her in in a new white dress/But the stain left an ache on her mother's breast/Now all that's left are the ghostly steps from a distant corridor"). Anchored by a throbbing baseline and Ani DiFranco's and Vivian Green's sterling harmony vocals, this is still an undiscovered gem! The same can't be said for "Shine"....as a relatively new cut - the title cut of Lauper's non-US released 2001 CD - the singer makes the mistake of doing an almost note for note version of the original track. It would have been much cooler to see her do it as, say, an almost spoken word ballad, just to shake things up. "True Colors" is both sweet and raw (as well as a tad bit pitchy!), while "Water's Edge" is nakedly haunting. The disc could have easily ended on a strong note with "Fearless", all folksy and bare-boned. Instead, we get the only real bomb on TBA, a frantic, silly version of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun", featuring Japanese super-stars (?) Puffi AmiYumi. This signature song of Lauper's has been remixed and rerecorded so many times that this would have been the perfect time to try something new, say, a hushed, bare bones acoustic arrangement. Too bad. But, overall, I've got to say THE BODY ACOUSTIC is a very nice reworking of some classic Cyndi Lauper material. However, I also have to reiterate...it's time for Lauper to get back in the studio and record an album of new original material (As with all my reviews, I'm giving the disc an extra half a star for including the lyrics, something extra rare on best-of's and re-recording packages).