Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [38]
Anne keeps the heat up and brings you back again and again enraptured and slavering precisely by the scientific application of that time-honored and almost forgotten erotic technique—the holdout. She's the ultimate tease, because she gives you nothing but her vibrating presence. No foldout covers with Lainie Kazan cleavage, no four-page spreads in Playboy, not even breathy vocals a la Julie London. About all they ever show on her album covers is her head, or her body's just a silhouette shrouded in the infinite intangible beckoning mysteries of the night. Which gives you a lot to fantasize.
Even if, as Rolling Stone recently revealed, she does have “a large lesbian following.” But don’t let that worry you, that's just kismet, this katy's as straight as a yardarm except for her perfect pearly tits and roundy mound o’ bush and arco droolo calves and well you know the rest….
She also told aforementioned mag that “I want to quit [showbiz] when I’m 30 … and get married and have kids, and I really don’t believe you can combine career and family.” Which means we’d better get into this sweet honey jive of hers fast, starting with today when you’re gonna buy Danny's Song. This album is her supreme recorded achievement, partially because she's just now coming into her maturity, both vocally and in her choice of material—ain’t no filler here, whereas some of her earlier albums were almost as patchy as those excelsior-balls Helen Reddy keeps getting twined in. But here the title song alone is worth the price. You’ve heard it on the radio so you know it's a masterpiece. It's by that hippie panda Kenny Loggins, but don’t pay no mind, it was his one burst of brilliance. It's all about the impending birth of his (or Annie's, or somebody's) child, like Tupelo Honey except better because Annie ain’t running from no banshees of Irish gloom, she could well be in suburbia which is part of her triumph. Those people by the air conditioners need something to identify with, and it sure ain’t the Spiders from Mars.
Other highlights of the studio first side include Randy Newman's “I’ll Be Home,” which ain’t been done this good since Barbra Streisand, except totally diff interp because Barb's schnozzonasality gave her a Little Girl Blue poignance, whereas Annie's a mature and fulfilled woman and means it not someday in the misty rosy future after she's got herself sorted out but right now, you poor grime becaked khaki’d sap! Her throat's that open!
Danny's Song really begins to whirl on side two, which was all recorded live in Ottawa before a frenzied crowd of Annie's most pantingly ardent Canuck followers. Not a dry eye or seat in the house, and her performance is suitably feelingful and intense, though of course within the proper bounds, since half her charm and mystique is that much as Annie feels her music she never resorts to strident melodra-matics a la Janis or Tina. She just ain’t that kinda tushie. She's subtle. “Ease Your Pain” ‘s by that blustery old bozo Hoyt Axton, who used to sing about cocaine until the hard life and fast wimmen got to him and he took to writing songs about and for succor. Annie gives it to him in
milky globules of pure relief, too, no mistaking that aureole pillow. Freckles even I betcha. When she gives so much so consistently, you can only wonder how much she's getting, especially when she does songs like Scott “San Francisco Flower Pate” McKenzie's “What About Me,” which is the next hit single here and takes a real woman's stand: Hey, you, stop walking on me! Gimmie the real thing for a change, you big lug!
Sure thing, honey! But no. She's obviously fulfilled, she don’t need you. All