Octo_Russ

Eileen Rose [Shine Like It Does]

I've had this disc for maybe a decade, it's never appeared in my daily highlight 'disc of the day', it's by far not a great album, usually discs like this are quickly purged out of my collection as a liability, a disc that gets in the way, whereas i could be listening to something else, a useful asset of a disc, well i played this today, and even though i admit that it's no great shakes still, i never seem to get the desire to just sell it, today i actually enjoyed playing it, it's got something to it, an album doesn't take ten years to work on me, maybe this will be a first, i can't see myself finding this a great album in another ten years though.

Eileen Rose is an American Singer-Songwriter, she's really quite unknown, she's got four albums in her catalogue, and this is her first, i bought it in a second-hand shop in London, i was initially attracted by the booklet cover, a really well laid out shot, in some American diner, with an empty stool in the foreground, she now tours with her band The Holy Wreck.

On this listen, the two tracks i liked the best were tracks 1 & 8, with track 8 'Shining' the most impressive, this is where the title of the album comes from, and i don't know why this track isn't called 'Shine Like It Does'!, it's very bluesy in a way, and it's hard to pigeon hole Eileen Rose, it starts off with a really clever acoustic guitar riff, and Eileen sings solo over this for nearly a minute, other instruments come in one by one, especially in the second verse [1:28+] it cranks up the invention, drums and glockenspiel come in [1:38+] a really enlightening moment, the rest of the song gets heavier, and her voice gets louder, and with sing a long chorus, she sure knows how to create something in layers.

Here's Eileen Rose singing 'Shining' live on YouTube.