Album Review: Nicki Bluhm - To Rise You Gotta Fall
When songwriting, arrangements, performance and production come together for Nicki Bluhm, the singer/songwriter is virtually untouchable.
Such is the case on the girl-group tribute “How Do I Love You” and, especially, the swampy, 1970s soul of the title track to Bluhm’s solo debut, To Rise You Gotta Fall.
The quality of these tracks make the balance of the LP - a raw breakup album spawned by her divorce from Tim Bluhm, her spilt with the Gramblers and her move from California to Tennessee - so disappointing.
The emotions on display in songs like “I Hate You,” “It’s Ok Not to be Ok” and “Last to Know” could make for seriously deep material. But as these titles suggest, the songwriting - even with assistance from Ryan Adams on “Battlechain Rose” - is relatively shallow; the performances derivative of 40-year-old balladry and proto-soul.
Saddled with gold/cold/hold rhyme schemes and references to rivers of tears and touching the sky, the songs fail to penetrate even when Bluhm - who possesses a fetching voice that sounds like a less-robust, more-vulnerable Susan Tedeschi - sings such heart-wrenching lines as: You stopped loving me/I can’t stop loving you.
There just isn’t enough there here.
Grade card: Nicki Bluhm - To Rise You Gotta Fall - C-
6/8/18
