Search - Jules Verdone :: Diary of a Liar

Tastes good, REAL filling

12/25/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I keep coming back to this disc again and again, and hear more in it all the time. Over time you can come to see most of the tunes fitting into an inter-related whole that tells the story of a downright ugly personal collapse, carefully hidden in a guise of cleverly-hooked pop lyrics. It's sometimes too honest ("When I Snap Out Of This", "Porch Song"); other times when you think she's sacrified writing from experience to pop cleverness, you realize that the subject isn't what you thought ("Finger"). There isn't a single song on the disc that doesn't bear many listenings and bear them well -- even the pop-cleverest offering, "Baltimore Or Less", turns out to yield a rich vein of hidden story beneath the hooks.And that's after all where the greatest strength of this disc is. Verdone seems to have that rare gift of suggestion that can embed a novel in a few lines of song lyric, and then fit them to a melody that brings the thing to life -- at least on these songs, she's in a class with masters of that art such as Neil Young, Ani DiFranco and Joni Mitchell.This is one of those impossible-to-top efforts by an unknown artist. I originally picked it up at an only moderately well-attended "hometown" show in Rochester NY (where she's originally from) for the customary show-price of $10. Who knows whether she'll ever do anything again -- don't bother trying to care, just order this and listen to it."