Alana Davis

Blame It On Me (Elektra)
by Jamie Kiffel

Sweet and slow as maple liqueur dripped over ice, Alana Davis‘ voice eases down into the fine space between slow jazz and folk rock. Often straining down into the multi-shaded raw umbers of Tina Turner’s catgut-bodied tones, Davis sends cello-deep vibrations over songs of sad maturity (“Turtle”), paranoia (“Murder”), and of course, bittersweet love and the pleasure of independence from it. Lyrics flow easily, successfully avoiding the female pop-jazz singer’s Scylla and Charybdis of oversentimentality and menstrual bitterness. The album is heavy with a good measure of other artists’ lyrics, but I accept these as nods to the various musical traditions Davis would like to subconsciously evoke, rather than as blatant stealing. Some examples include “So you say that you ain’t got money… I’m so in love with you honey” in “Love and Pride”; “I’m just feeding my head” in “Crazy,” and the virtually unaltered cover of Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavors,” which opens the disc. This cover is the hardest of Davis’ “borrowed” musical elements for me to understand, for she literally goes so far as to emulate DiFranco’s signature “Not a Pretty Girl” tones. I enjoy hearing various artists expand on each other’s work through lending their own personal idiosyncrasies to it, but straight-out Xerox copying seems pointless. My only other qualm with the disc is the picture on its cover: a line drawing of Davis, half-smiling, with a black eye. I’ve had enough of the sexualization of bruised females, especially in the context of a disc that apparently has nothing to do with battered women. Other than this overindulgence of a transgressive flight of fancy,Blame It On Me is smoothly flavored with sugared twists of human emotion, and well-spiced with cracked pepper seeds of fresh thought.