Plumb

If you haven’t heard much from Plumb, that’s probably because she doesn’t get the attention she used to back in her heyday. This explains why, on her greatest hits album, Beautiful History, the songs focus on only two of her five albums. The albums in particular are 1999’s candycoatedwaterdrops, and 2006’s Chaotic Resolve. It’s strange, since she has five albums to her name, both with a band and solo. Her self-titled debut is completely overlooked and there’s only one song a piece from Blink and Beautiful Lumps Of Coal. Does this mean that Plumb is simply not as popular as she was a few years ago, or is Beautiful History simply not putting her best on display?

A closer look at this album seems to lean towards the latter answer, as the single from Beautiful History, “Hang On,” was a hit when it was released to radio. Of course, it would have been hard for it not to be, it’s a catchy song, even if it’s not as strong as Plumb as shown herself to be capable of, falling victim to a lot of clichés about hanging on even, “When the world is crashing,” and the like. While it’s not a terrible song, it’s just pretty weak and it seems more like a b-side than a solid album track. The other new song, “Beautiful History,” doesn’t fare much better. It seems that for these new songs, Plumb fell victim to Inspiration-Syndrome, where a songwriter goes from writing personal songs about tough topics that are haunting and moving to writing vaguely uplifting songs that could be about pretty much anything.

As far as the choice of hit songs goes, it’s not bad, but Plumb had a few hits off her debut that are missing entirely, and as mentioned before, there’s only a passing mention of Blink or Beautiful Lumps Of Coal. It’s a weird oversight. The songs used from candycoatedwaterdrops are also all rerecorded versions or, in the case of, “Damaged,” an alternate version. If they did this to get around that album being released on a different label, why didn’t they have her record a couple of her hits from her debut? It’s not a bad thing in and of itself, just puzzling.

There’s also a remix disc attached, which is basically two mixes a piece from, “Hang On,” “Always,” “In My Arms,” and, “Cut.” They’re pretty generic remixes that don’t add much to the songs, just setting them to a club beat and extending them. Most times they don’t even sound much like the original song, so much so that you would never guess they were the same song until the words come in. This is really an odd situation in the case of “Cut,” which was originally a piano ballad about self-mutilation that has been turned into a jamming dance song. That seems more than a little inappropriate to the subject matter. More appropriate would have been to apply the remix to, “I Can’t Do This,” which is from the same album and would fare better as a dance song.

So, aside from two weak new songs and a pointless remix disc, this isn’t a bad introduction to Plumb. The songs from previous albums do represent some of her best work and will probably gain her some new listeners. The downside is that there’s not really much to attract existing fans, as the rerecorded songs don’t sound much different from the originals and they will only be disappointed by the new songs. In the end, this album is ok, but only if you’ve never heard of Plumb and just want to see what her music is about.

Tagged as: Beautiful History, Brenden Kirch, Hang On, Plumb, Review

Does it Resonate with you?

Name

Email (will not be published)

URL