New Releases

Britta Lee Shain

What The Heart Wants

by Steve Wagner

It was a Tuesday morning. I’d just gotten up out of bed and turned on my phone. (You do that first thing in the morning too, don’t you?) Slowly, as the phone booted, I realized that “What the Heart Wants” was playing on my mental radio.The title track of Britta Lee Shain’s new CD, it’s a song with a rare combination of substance and catchiness. Singing like a breathless Kim Karnes, she delivers a universal sentiment wrapped up in a short, memorable chorus: “The heart wants what the heart wants / the heart trumps the mind every time…”It’s an early peak in a collection full of melodic and lyrical highs.Another of them is “Boomer’s Bones,” in which she reminds us how “the children of sixties” (of which she is one) “were born to change the world,” and cites the beauty (Woodstock, American Bandstand) and the ugliness (assassinations, Vietnam) that defined that era. The song might have ended up being the dusty reminiscence of an aged hippie but Shain grants the Boomers an enduring and current vitality that literally took my breath away.Shain is the author of a memoir (released concurrent with this CD) called Seeing the Real You at Last, about her time on the road with Bob Dylan and her friendship and brief romantic involvement with him.Knowing this, it’s hard to not wonder if she’s singing to him or about him, especially on “You’re Just a Man,” and “Too Much Fame.” In the latter, she skewers the subject of the song—who’s “not there” except when being worshiped by the sycophants he vampirically feeds on—in a way that would probably make Dylan himself proud.She not only turns in a beautiful and credible rendition of Dylan’s own latter-day nugget, “To Make You Feel My Love,” but a peak at the CD credits reveals that Dylan is co-author of the sexy 12-bar blues, “You Can Blow My Mind (If You Want To).”Shain’s songs are very good but it’s her voice—a naked, vulnerable thing—that sets her apart. Even when she’s turning on the vocal gravel, there’s a delicateness (sometimes to the point of trembling, as on “I Want to Be Me”) that somehow increases the sense of her commitment to her message. It’s a welcome contrast, in these days of big, “American Idol”-type voices.

Producer Ed Tree and his usual band of tasteful studio cats have done a terrific job of supporting that delicate voice and Shain’s genuine communications, with tasteful, steady accompaniment across a palette of country, blues, and other traditional sounds.

Steve Wagner, Songwriter Square

https://songwriterssquare.com/songwriters-square-newsletter-june-2016/