 Tasmin Archer Tasmin Archer's Shipbuilding EP is a two-sided affair: half being excellent covers of Elvis Costello songs, and the rest filled out by live and/or acoustic versions of her own originals. The very notable contrast in quality of the songwriting in the two sets, though, makes you wonder about the conception of this album. Was it originally going to be just a 4-song EP of Costello covers, and then either a suit, Tasmin, or her management decided to fill it out with alternate versions of her stuff? I'm curious to whether Tasmin herself thinks her songs hold up with any of the Costello material. Granted, I'm biased as I'm a huge Elvis fan, but even after hundreds of plays of this disc (no exaggeration), Tasmin's originals come off as perfunctory, while the covers shine like Grampy's Skoal tin at Christmastime. (?) All of the covers either match or far surpass the originals. "Shipbuilding" starts off the set; no Chet Baker delay-soaked trumpet solo here (is that good? Er, was it even necessary to namecheck it?), but Tasmin shows great range throughout. "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror" goes for a much more straightforward arrangement than the original's brass band version, and surprisingly comes out on top. Tasmin's version of "All Grown Up" blows Elvis's bloated b>Mighty Like a Rose version out of the water. Piano and voice only, just like the sets Bette and I used to do when Barry was discovered and I inherited his bathhouse gig. "New Amsterdam" makes it 4-for-4, though it's not hard to forget how Costello's version goes, due to most of Get Happy blurring together in a dense, though ultimately likeable, fog. The rest of the disc includes three songs from a live show, as well as a piano-and-voice version of "Sleeping Satellite." They're really not bad songs at all – stuff you might hear overhead in a Banana Republic as they're getting ready to close – but somehow Tasmin the opening act manages to upstand Tasmin the main act. Or is the Costello block the "main act"? F'n semantics! A shame Shipbuilding wasn't released a couple of years later, since Tasmin did have a couple of outstanding songs on her later Mitchell Froom-produced Bloom album, notably "After Hell," which sounds refreshingly like "Slow Hand" by the Pointer Sisters. Regardless, it's about time someone acknowledged Elvis Costello as a great songwriter, instead of just as "that guy that duetted with supposed black-magician Daryl Hall". (?)
Review by Bradley A. Milton |