Album gives Atlas Reason To Swagger
By Eric Ernst,

For even the most talented musicians and entertainers, sometimes mere excellence or virtuosity isn't enough if the music itself doesn't complement their particular abilities.

One need only recall Aretha Franklin's diastrous period in the early 60's, when Columbia Records tried to transform her from a gospel and blues singer into a mainstream diva belting out pop hits, a marketing fiasco that resulted in a series of staggeringly mediocre recordings and her eventual return to Atlantic Records where her career had begun. Asked how he would handle Franklin's talents differently upon her return , Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler simply stated, "We're going to put her back in church".

On her second CD, entitled "Swagger" (Neptuna Records), Nancy Atlas has discovered that her own particular house of worship is a dusty southern roadhouse where rock and roll and the blues are played with a country twang as the sounds of accordions and pedal steel guitars weave around a driving rock beat.

Striving to more closely replicate the energy and complexities of her live performances, the singer songwriter and her band, the Nancy Atlas Project, retain much of the guitar driven exhuberance of thier first album, 27, but in adding new band-mate Neil Surreal on keyboards and Accordian, have adopted a sound that more completely showcases the depth and power of Ms. Atlas's singing.

This isn't to imply that her earlier recording, also released on Neptuna Records, was a failure in any sense of the word. I was, however, bedeviled by poor production quality and it's more straight ahead rock and roll styling did little to showcase Ms. Atlas' remarkable voice. It did, on the otherhand, illustrate her emerging talents as a songwriter.

I should state that I thoroughly enjoyed the new album, "Swagger," in spite of the fact that I'm not particularly fond of country music (probaly for more sociological than musical reasons). Also, given the typically blistering guitar work of Johnny Blood and the driving rythm section of Brett King on Bass and Richard Rosch on Drums, the work stands miles away from the famed iconographic mediocrites of Opryland and Branson, Missouri.

Instead Ms. Atlas calls to mind the music of Lucinda Williams and John Hiatt, with thier occaisionally dark and sardonic lyrics, and early Bonnie Raitt with her fun-loving exuberance and tales of evenings awash in whisky, romance and heartbreak. A rather cynical friend even felt that there was a felling of maturity in the songs that he said reminded him of "Mary Chapin Carpenter on steriods."

Even with the albums country western overtones, however, the group never loses sight of the power and impact of it's rock and roll roots. More importantly, the songs themselves derive no small measure of impact from the genuine and personal images that Ms. Atlas is able to draw upon and which she is able to express through the sheer power of her vocal ablilities.

After opening with the Cajun- tinged "Boots," followed by "Wake Up Tomorrow," which with it's opening harmonica seems influenced by "Harvest"- era Neil Young, the band reverts to its rock and roll origins with "Symphonies and Serenades" and "Shot My Wad". "My Love" sounds like Joan Jett channeling a gosphel singer in it's raspy and desperate evocations of love and desire over music that hammers and fades and then builds again to crescendos of emotional and musical energy.

John Prine's songwriting influence is felt heavily in "Whiskey in a Wheatfield" and "1979 Mustang", although the use of synthesized strings in the latter were a bit disconcerting as too was what sounded disturbingly like a yodel at the onset of "Don't Come Lookin For Me." Luckily this rapidly turned into a rather beautiful and melodic wail, lonely and haunted, so I was saved from having to make any musical comparisons between Ms. Atlas and Slim Whitman.

One significant improvement over the band's earlier release is the inclusion of a lyric sheet wo that I now actually know the words to songs I'd heard a dozen times in concert but still had absolutely no idea what they were about. At the same time, being overly literal in trying to express vocal mannerisms can always be a questionable proposition as one can see in the chorus of "My Love," in which, in trying to follow Ms. Atlas's vocal lead, the transcribers wrote:

So won't you taaa aaaaack it, Taa aaaack it Or just leave me alone.

After listening to the song, I know what they're trying to say, but every time I read the liner notes, I was left with the visual image of a songwriter attempting to cough up a fur ball.

This rather insignificant criticism notwithstanding, "Swagger" illustrates the emergence of the Nancy Atlas Project as a band that seems to have discovered it's true voice. Moving beyond its bar band roots without abandoning its attendant vibrancy and energy, Ms. Atlas and her associates have crafted and album that is true to her rock and roll heritage even as it crosses over into a new stylistic territory well south of the East End.