Reviews: Eileen Hazel ~ My Interesting Condition
Posted on Saturday, February 22 @ 01:07:02 EST
Topic: Reviews

Artist: Eileen Hazel
CD: My Interesting Condition

Home: San Francisco, California

Style: Pop, Country, Folk

Quote: "Take a closer listen - this is everyone's interesting condition".

By Les Reynolds

Eileen Hazel's latest release is interesting, indeed. A mix of pop, country and folk, the San Francisco bay- area artist penned nine original of the 10 tunes for an eclectic musical experience.

The Minnesota native's engaging voice is clear and fluid. Her writing is well crafted and the CD utilizes a mix of tempo, lots of excellent vocal harmonies from Root & Green and excellent guitar and mandolin sounds from producer Lisa Zeiler. Percussion, supplied by Paulo Baldi, plays a very important and pleasantly noticeable part on several selections.

Some of the best tunes (instrumentally speaking) are: "Seed," which features Rick Auerbach with some understated and well-placed and played electric guitar; the country "Epiphany," with great pedal steel from Jeff Baldwin and vocal harmony from Avram Siegel (Kathy Kallick Band) and "Pixie Dance" - an appropriately named piece of "instrumental mischief" (quote from the bio sheet) on Appalachian dulcimer. (An exquisite tune!)

Lyrics? Plenty of good ones. One notable song is "Fooling Me," which the bio sheet characterizes as "a lighthearted look at the woes of love and evolution.

Well, when a writer says "...Once I believed, but it seems I was wrong
Wiped my snot on my sleeve, then I wrote down this song..."

- that's kinda light.

But that's not all. Eileen continues in the same song:

"...Her behavior is genetic,
she's been programmed since birth
To fool around with fire,
and then cry when it hurts.
...Darwin says we're evolved.
He wrote The Origin of Species in a week
But monkeys have got it solved,
they express their affection grooming fleas...
Yeah, love is just a fantasy
My big overdeveloped and highly evolved brain
was only fooling me."

She can be very, very serious, too. "Terrorist," was written during the 1998 bombing of Iraq, then updated to include the situation with Afghanistan. She basically asks the same questions Bob Dylan asked many years ago in "Masters of War," (only without the vocal snarl) and wrote it in the vein of Jackson Browne's "Lives in the Balance":

"In Iraq, people are dying
from starvation and disease
With our bombs and economic sanctions
We have brought them to their knees

Do you believe peace can dome from war somehow?
Tell me, who is the terrorist now?
And in the media, it's a sordid affair
It's a circus of genocide, it's a mockery of despair.

...Must we add to all the suffering
Must we multiply the grief?.."

Poignant, and interesting, questions for the listener, the world, to ponder. Take a closer listen - this is everyone's interesting condition. Yes, yours, too.