Cooking Vinyl
2007
Late December
About This Album
Singer and songwriter Maria McKee takes another step inside that dimly lit hallway where her Muse dwells and comes out into the light with yet another direction to follow. Where her last studio offering Peddlin' Dreams was swathed in acoustic guitars and folk-rock textures, Late December is anything but. On her debut for the eclectic and wonderful Cooking Vinyl label, McKee announces no return to the squall of Life Is Sweet, but there certainly are nods to Burt Bacharach (in the sophisticated pop of the title track which opens the album), Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen and Phil Spector (the innocence maturing into reluctant wisdom with playful keyboard interludes inserted between large, multi-tracked vocal choruses -- all McKee -- in an approximation of Spector's Wall of Sound production technique in "A Good Heart" and the lyrical determination to stand in the fire of Bruce Springsteen), to Jim Steinman (the lyrical and production bombast of "Destine"). Does that mean this record is somehow derivative and lacks imagination? Hardly. What it does mean is that McKee doesn't imitate anything. All of these personas are part of her aesthetic articulation, and many others, from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht (courtesy of Lotte Lenya's performances) to Samuel Beckett, Flannery O'Connor, Brendan Behan, and the American theater tradition, all are woven tightly into her writing and singing with many others.
Track List (try tracks 1,5,6,8 and 9)

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