- Cindy Bullens
Neverland
Blue Rose Records BLU CD0310 (Europe)
Artemis (USA)
By Marianne Ebertowski
 "This album
is dedicated to all who have risen up out of the ashes and to
those who face the fire. Please don't go to Neverland - you'll
kiss your dreams goodbye."
(Cindy Bullens in the liner notes of Neverland )
Cindy Bullens knows all about "Neverland," I guess,
after having to face her daughter Jessie's struggle with Hodgkin's
disease and watch her die at age 11 in 1996. It took her three
years to rise up out of the ashes and deliver her first singer-songwriter
album, Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth (Artemis). Another
four years later, Cindy is back with a vengeance, this time with
"the rock and roll record (she's) always wanted to make."
Cindy Bullens has wandered a long and winding road to get
where she is now. Born and raised in Massachusetts, she met Elton
John shortly after her arrival in Los Angeles in 1974. She became
one of Elton's backup singers, accompanied the extravagantly
bespectacled Englishman on three major tours and sang on his
majorly succesful album Blue Moves and his No. 1 hit "Don't
Go Breaking My Heart."
After Elton John came John Travolta, believe it or not. Cindy
earned herself a Grammy nomination in 1978 for her vocal performance
on the Grease soundtrack. Success seemed to follow her
around. Only a year later, she got a second Grammy nomination
for her song "Survivor."
After she married Dan Crewe in1979, Bullens put her career
aside to raise their two daughters, Reid and Jessie. But in spite
of her low key presence on the music scene for quite a while,
many different artists have recognized her songwriting abilities
and recorded Bullens' songs, including Texas' finest and naughtiest,
the Dixie Chicks.
Neverland is a relentlessly hard-rocking album. Cindy
Bullens co-produced it with Ray Kennedy, the man behind Steve
Earle's impressive acoustic comeback albums I Feel Alright
and El Corazon, who also contributes mandolin, mandocello,
12-string acoustic and gut-string guitars.
Bullens plays acoustic and electric guitar, throws in a bit
of keyboard wherever she thinks it necessary and generally impresses
with her throaty, androgenous vocals. If that sounds like enough
reasons to add her to the growing queue of "next Lucinda
Williamses," that's fine with me, though I figure Bullens
has had enough life and misfortune herself to be her very own
Cindy Bullens.
Neverland couldn't have had a more appropriate opener
than the hard-hitting title track itself.
Don't ever go to Neverland
where wishes don't come true
and nothing ever happens there
the way you want it to.
You will not be surprised to find her on this refrein in the
company of a sometimes not so extravagantly bespectacled, but
always fine and naughty Texan named Steve Earle. Steve's harmonies
sound great on this track - he clearly knows what he's singing
about: Neverland is his sort of place, his sort of music.
On "Long Way Down(I Liked Falling)," an agonizing
song about lost love and on "Cry To You", a passionate
hold-on-to-love song, introduced and accompanied on mandolin
by Cindy herself (very agressively Earle-like), Mary Ann Kennedy
and Siobhan Maher-Kennedy create a rather "poppy" sound
with their smooth harmonies.
"Hammer And Nails," co-written by Bullens with Radney
Foster, is a positively country sounding stomping rocker, with
John Hiatt on harmony vocals and Ginger Cote, Cindy Bullens'
long-term musical companion and one of the few female drummers
on this rugged territory firmly hammering away.
Well, it takes
much more than passion
For love to prevail
Gotta raise it up
with hammer and nails.
That may be so, but in spite of all the hammering, love's
house of cards doesn't even survive till the next song, "The
Right Kind Of Goodbye," which Bullens introduces like a
female Steve Earle or Bruce Springsteen, with bittersweet harmonica
sounds.
From here it's a small musical and lyrical step to the beautiful
"Send Me An Angel," already written in January 1990
and performed a month later at a tribute to Roy Orbison. It's
the first song Bullens wrote after leaving her "rock and
roll phase" behind (at least temporarily) and entering the
singer/songwriter world. It's a song of hope and doubt with a
compelling urgency helped to express by Emmylou Harris on angelic
harmony vocals:
Send me an angel /before it's too late/I got a pocket full
of alibis and fire in my veins .../if I let go/ I know I'm gonna
fall apart/ can you save this heart/ or have I gone too far/
if I surrender/ will I cry tonight/ I could die tonight / but
maybe I'll fly tonight.
After that, Cindy Bullens dares to enter the sort of countryish
bluesy territory inhabited by cars and lust and longing which
seems to be occupied by Lucinda Williams. In that sense "Drivin'
My Heart Around" is Bullens' "Car Wheels On A Gravel
Road" and "Baby I Want Your Love" on which Bullens
performs a very nice job on a resonator guitar her "Joy."
Whether Cindy quite succeeds to push Lucinda out of "her"
territory, I'm not quite sure. I personally think, Bullens' strength
lies in the gentler, more melodic singer/songwriter line of work.
The softly southern rocking "Gravity And Grace,"
a heart-felt song on the difficulty of establishing and keeping
some sort of balance in your life, on which she's accompanied
by Benmont Tench of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers on Hammond B-3,
suits her a lot better in my opinion.
"Sensible Shoes," co-written with former Dave Edmunds
bassist John David is, not surprisingly seen the co-writer's
credentials, the loudest piece on the album. Having been on the
receiving end of Dave Edmunds' band as part of a ten-piece audience
in a lonely London bar quite a few years ago, it's not exactly
my cup of tea, but Michael Rhodes' inventive bassplaying and
the fresh sounding harmony vocals of Cindy's daughter Reid make
the song passable.
I wish I could say that the album ends with a convincing closing
song, but, unfortunately, I'm not too keen on the piano-drenched
"One Single Moment" on which Cindy Bullens seems to
want to resemble her first employer slightly too much for my
taste.
In spite of this for me rather disappointing ending and the
fact that Neverland is not exactly free from the occasional
rock and roll cliché, musically as well as lyrically,
the album rings true and has an authentic taste of blood, sweat
and tears. Bullens' songs are well-crafted in an old-fashioned
sort of way. Her lyrics even rhyme without sounding tacky most
of the time. Neverland is a dark abum with spots of hope.
It's a mature album about love and loss made by an artist who
has been around the block more often than she cared to, but never
kissed her dreams goodbye.
www.cindybullens.com
www.artemis.com
www.bluerose-records.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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