Close Up Vol 1: Love Songs Cooking Vinyl***

Close Up Vol 1: Love Songs

is the first in a planned quartet of albums from Suzanne Vega, all slated for release over the next two years. It’s a wide trawl through a back catalogue that pits early heart-stoppers such as

Marlene on the Wall

(now relieved of some of its original urgency) against the ice queen bossa nova of

Caramel

and the regretful S

ong in Red and Gray

.

While this project will hardly garner Vega a brand new audience, consisting as it does, of intimately acoustic song settings and, on occasion, emotionally parched lyrics, it’s likely to lap comfortably against the shore where folk songs carved from distilled secrecies and insinuating melodies thrive. The overriding impression is one that Vega is so much more enthralled by what’s left unsaid, rather than what’s underlined in bold. See suzannevega.com