Melissa Etheridge – The Medicine Show (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:10 minutes | 917 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Concord Records
For her 15th album, the singer-songwriter explores pain—physical and emotional—and the ways Americans medicate. It’s a call for marijuana legalization, a rallying cry against opioids and a plea for unity. On expansive rocker “Faded By Design,” the cancer survivor eschews Western medicine for self-care: “Don’t call the doctor / The cure is in my mind.” The spare and lovely “Here Comes the Pain” empathizes the root cause of addiction, while “Woman Like You” explores feminism and changing norms against a swirling, McCartney-esque melody. Etheridge has said that she was going for a ’90s rock sound—”moody and fierce.” With its giant grunge guitars and swooning chorus, “Shaking,” a look at collective national anxiety, hits the bulls-eye. As does the fierce, arena-rock title track which proves that Etheridge can make “e-i-e-i-oh” sound tough as nails. Even drawing courage from the survivors of a mass shooting on period-perfect power ballad “Last Hello” she never condescends. There is nothing small or shy in Etheridge’s songs, and it’s refreshing.
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Melissa Etheridge – MEmphis Rock And Soul (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:43 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Blues Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Stax
Memphis Rock and Soul — meaning the kind of integrated, funky, swampy R&B-rock hybrid cranked out of Memphis’ American Sound Studio in the late ’60s, music that often saw release on the Stax imprint — is certainly well within the wheelhouse of Melissa Etheridge, who has emphasized the bluesy, soulful undercurrent in her voice since her eponymous 1988 debut. Arriving nearly 30 years after that album, Memphis Rock and Soul — released on a revived Stax by Concord Records — is faithful and loving to the original versions, preserving the arrangements but sometimes allowing the band to vamp a bit, as on Sam & Dave’s “Hold on, I’m Coming.” Usually, Etheridge stays with tried-and-true songs, finding space for both Otis Redding and Albert King, but she slides a couple of left-field choices into the mix, such as William Bell’s “Wait a Minute.” If Etheridge doesn’t necessarily rework these songs, these straightforward interpretations illustrate why the catalog endures and her affection for both the songs and sound of Southern soul in the ’60s is evident.
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