Americana Music Reviews

 

Patty Medina
Happy Hours and Heartaches
Self-Released
by Samuel L. Wereb

Rockzilla himself has decreed that this thing of ours, Americana music, is "Whatever the hell we say it is." Bearing that in mind, would you buy a self-released CD containing a few undistinguished pop songs and two exceptionally beautiful Americana tunes? I did and I come bearing news. Patty Medina is a first-rate singer and songwriter who belongs right here with us.

Writers wake up every day earnestly hoping that today will be the day they discover something, anything brilliant and original. Then we want to learn all about it and tell as many people as possible what we found. Patty Medina is just such a discovery. She can really write, sing, and play and I want you to know what I know.

Happy Hours and Heartaches was a late 2001 release. It was also self-released, which is a shame because it essentially means it wasn't released at all. It's her debut album and it has some of the typical weaknesses one would expect to find on a self-produced first effort. Yet, there truly aren't any bad songs here; it's just that the good ones are so damned good, you can't figure out why she recorded the others at all. Two songs are so brilliant that they completely marginalize the rest of the album. Before I tell you about them, I guess I have some explaining to do.

Patty Medina lives and works in a town west of Austin, way west in fact: Los Angeles. She's never heard of Shiner Bock or even Luckenbach, as far as I can tell. She could, however, tell you a thing or two about J.S. Bach, being classically trained in vocals, piano and guitar. When I interviewed her in late September, she had never heard of Americana music or Texas country.

As we talked and I explained what was going on, she had a bit of an epiphany, "Yes! That's exactly what I want to do and how I want to be heard." She hadn't known there was a burgeoning, albeit remote, zeitgeist of kindred spirits or a new genre where she might find a musical home. She is simply an extremely talented performer who has her pick of good gigs in the L.A. area. I think L.A. is her biggest problem. Their music-industry types are vainly trying to plug her somewhere into the pop-scene, and it doesn't work. This girl belongs here, and I'll tell you why.

Happy Hours and Heartaches starts out spinning around in a trivial, production-driven, pop eddy in its first three tracks. Then the singer plies her way into deeper currents where she finally finds her best voice, settles down, and starts to genuinely sing and play.

I followed along long enough to be completely low-bridged by her strikingly poignant fourth song, "Going Dancing," which knocked the silly, self-righteous critic's smirk right off my face for good. Like a sucker-punch in a bar fight, I didn't see this one coming and haven't felt the same since. It's a waltzy but haunting song, utterly charming and subtle. This girl can sing and she can tell a story. When she says why she's going dancing, you want to dance with her all night:

I saved a little money and my chores are done, I'm goin' dancin'
The gang is gonna be there and we'll have some fun while we're dancin'
There's a new boy in our school, and he don't see me like you do
And I'm gonna dance with him tonight.

'Cause when I'm dancin' on the floor, it's like I don't live here anymore
And the dreams of who I want to be take flight
In the company of a stranger I see myself in a new light
And I'm gonna dance with him tonight.

Her songs are catchy but not cloying, and they get better every time you hear them. It's difficult to de-couple the poem from the music in this way, and not really fair. But, I'm only giving you half the song, and there is a delightful production effect I don't want to give away, much like the final secret in a good suspense thriller. It is the best song on the disc for pure singing and picking. Beyond storytelling, Patty Medina can really play. She is a virtuoso singer and guitarist, and "Going Dancing" dispenses with all pop pretentiousness and stands on its own as a lyrically driven, acoustical guitar-based song.

As beautiful as "Going Dancing" is, her masterpiece is the extraordinary seventh song, "Still Life (With Window View)." It is a delight, first, in that it's an inspired, naturally occurring "train song" with a driving acoustic rhythm and a whining lap steel guitar that instantly conjures up a window seat on a fast train before you hear her first word. But it's much more than some deliberately contrived "train song." (I told you she knows nothing about Texas.) It's intelligently introspective, sung gorgeously, and remarkably well composed. Nowhere else on the album is her voice as strong, plaintive, and compelling, or any song as well played. The song asks if the beauty is in the journey or the destination. I don't know how you'll answer, but I know that from the first time you hear it, you'll follow her, bidden.

I've deliberately skewered her pop songs, because I wanted to show her best work by relief. There actually is one good pop song here, called "Blah, Blah, Blah." It's worth a spin if you like pop with some brains belted out loudly. Patty Medina has a powerful, distinctively beautiful voice and I won't be tempted to compare it with anyone. Her bio claims that people say her music invokes Natalie Merchant, which makes me laugh. When Natalie isn't doling out one of her limousine-socialist rants, I bet she lies awake at night wishing she could sing like this. Think Rickie Lee Jones or Emmylou Harris. Better yet, listen for yourself.

Patty Medina plays regularly in and around Los Angeles and is hard at work writing and producing her next album. Happy Hours and Heartaches is available from her website, www.pattymedina.net. It's only ten dollars, and the best ten bucks I've spent on music all year. If you can't get to see her in L.A., I am sure that she would be glad to hear from you through her website. Tell her, "You're not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway."

 
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