| Into the Blues | 
 enlarge | Artist: Joan Armatrading
Label: 429 Records
Category: Music
List Price: $18.98
Buy New: $10.88
You Save: $8.10 (43%)
New (34) Used (15) from $6.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 8786
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 17625
UPC: 795041762528
EAN: 0795041762528
ASIN: B000NVHWMU
Release Date: May 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: SEALED in Mint Condition! hole punch thru upc. 1st Class Next Day Shipping. ALWAYS Compare Feedback!
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| Tracks:
| • | A Woman in Love | | • | Play the Blues | | • | Into the Blues | | • | Liza | | • | Secular Songs | | • | My Baby's Gone | | • | D.N.A. | | • | Baby Blue Eyes | | • | Deep Down | | • | There Ain't a Girl Alive | | • | Empty Highway | | • | Mama Papa | | • | Something's Gotta Blow |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
On the surface, yes, this is a blues album; mostly, though, it's a Joan Armatrading album--which means she'll follow blues forms and conceits wherever she damn well pleases. On "Liza," she takes the "Mannish Boy" groove across the tracks for a pick-up on the wrong side of town; on "There Ain't a Girl Alive (Who Likes to Look in the Mirror Like You Do)," she dresses down a rival; on "Play the Blues," she simply undresses herself to a juicy, contemporary soul groove; and on "Mama Papa," the album's finest and funkiest moment, she recalls her youth on the island of St. Kitts in lines that flash with truth: "Seven people in one room/No heat/One wage/And bills to pay." It's also a guitar album: her blues chops, especially on the sprawling closer "Something's Gotta Blow," would give Robert Cray a serious run. Fiery as her playing can be, her blues riffs are mostly economical, concise, with evocative spaces between the notes. The same can't be said for the overall production values. Armatrading is still enamored with slick gimmicks: doubling and tripling her vocals and adding layers of echo on top of that, and synth pads and distortion that feel more bombastic than bright. Into the Blues is far from a return to form, but it still sends a tough, funky message. --Roy Kasten
Album Description
Into the Blues is the album that Joan Armatrading was always meant to write. Immediately you can tell how much she enjoys playing the blues as her guitar belts out these 13 hits.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Brilliant Album, beautiful woman, incredible music May 6, 2007
20 out of 26 found this review helpful
Since I saw this tiny young woman with this incredibly rich voice on a stage in Illinois somewhere in the early 80s, I have followed Joan with every album.
This is by and large one of her best albums ever. It's bluesy, yes, but it also showcases her incredible voice even on the non-blues songs and such songs as Baby Blue Eyes and There Aint a Girl alive are good examples.
The music has never been more varied and interesting. DNA is a masterpiece of rock and roll and of course the numerous traditional hard blues songs ala Buddy Guy show just how talented Ms. Armatrading is.
This album should not be missed by one of Rock's most underated and influencial artists.
JOAN ARMATRADING CONFOUNDS EXPECTATIONS AND TAKES IT TO A NEW LEVEL May 2, 2007
19 out of 25 found this review helpful
For decades Joan Armatrading has been adored as an articulate troubador singing about matters of the heart, a singer-songwriter who was too soulful to pigeon-hole as a folksinger but whose superbly dispassionate delivery only highlighted the passion of her subject matter.
If that's what you're looking for, you will not find it here. Joan has plugged in and recreated standard blues, getting downright giddy in this "woe is me" art form. For example, on the title tune "Into The Blues," with its haunting keyboards, Joan sings "the blues are here to make you glad you took a different path." On "Play The Blues" she sings "Baby when you sing the blues I take all my clothes off for you" and on the celebratory "Deep Down" the standard blues is boiled down to one sentence "I love you baby - deep down." No doom and gloom here.
The purest blues song thematically on the CD is probably "Empty Highway" with its "I stand outside in my underwear and watch the gentle rain fall down" refrain. The variety of the blues here is wide, from the poppy, acoustic "Baby Blues Eyes" with its anti-depressive lyric "those little imperfections are what I love about you/baby blue eyes and the smile of an angel" to the sothern fried reminiscence of "Mama Papa" which brings early Tina Turner to mind, to the uptempo blues shuffle of "D.N.A." and the straight up rocking blues of "There Ain't A Girl Alive" which is a screed about a vain woman that just cries out to be covered by The Rolling Stones.
Personally my favorite is the evocative "Secular Songs" which successfully lyrically walks the fine line of lambasting the changes in religion while reaffirming our ongoing need for spiritual growth ("They're singing secular songs in the churches/and there's not a word of God/It's all Schubert and Beethoven or lots of French love songs")
From the opening strains of the propulsive "A Woman In Love" to the closing notes of the explosive "Something's Gotta Blow" with its doubletracked vocal, "Into The Blues" is sheer brilliance, the fully mature display of an outstanding artist willing to tinker with the expected and take risks. Joan Armatrading finally lets loose and shows some emotion and the results are superior, all the more so for being so unexpected. This is a CD you'll be listening to for a long, long time.
The reclusive lady sings the blues ! April 27, 2008
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
The hugely influential and pioneering British singer-songwriter, is back with a brand new studio CD.
The reclusive legend tries her hand at the blues and proves quite a dab hand at it.
She basically plays everything here bar the drums and manages to inject everything with a sense of drive and passion. As always, her silky-smooth voice is the real star.
Joan's new album is the latest in a long line of fabulous releases dating back to her wonderfully successful breakthrough albums in the late 70s and early 80s such as Show Some Emotion, To the Limit and Me Myself I .
She remains an utterly compelling writer and performer of unique warmth.
She cites "Into The Blues" as her best work yet.
"I've wanted to make an album that truly reflected me and I think this does. I love the blues and while each song is very different there's a cohesive thread that runs throughout".
Her 19th album is a celebration the blues, which she describes as "the bedrock of modern music".
Her rich, mellow vocal suits the blues, as does her accomplished guitar playing.
She really enjoys playing all those well-oiled blues riffs on her trusty electric guitar to ornament her compositions.
One of them, "Baby Blue Eyes", features some impressive acoustic strumming, which adds a more earthy texture.
Always bold and unpredictable, Joan Armatrading has come to Muddy Waters relatively late, but better late than never.
This is an eclectic mix of blues-inspired songs that should please her loyal fans.
Armatrading's Dynamic Dive "Into the Blues" July 14, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Although her official website describes Joan Armatrading's new CD, INTO THE BLUES, as being "blues influenced" rather than a straightforward blues album, the songs on it achieve exactly what the best of blues music does. They take us deep inside the raw agonies and ecstasies of life, love, and the struggle to live at peace with ourselves and the world. That drama is one Armatrading has set to superb guitar-playing that rivals (with all due respect) that of such icons as BB King, Eric Clapton, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. Add to her artistry a voice which can boom like a Chicago baritone or caress like the sweetest ingénue and it becomes easy to see why this CD shot straight to number one on Billboard Magazine's blues chart.
On the title track of this phenomenal set, Armatrading proclaims, "My baby don't like rock and roll/ Not hip hop or pop/ My baby's just into the blues," then proceeds to deftly demonstrate why. We can debate whether the "baby" of which she's singing is a favorite lover or her guitar. But one thing not in question is the serious skill with which Armatrading explores various forms of the blues--rock, gospel, ballad--throughout the CD's 13 dynamic cuts.
The trademark finesse with which she's known to dissect the most intimate of relationships are in full play on the first two songs, "A Woman in Love" and "Play the Blues." She is particularly heart-wrenching on the mournfully plaintive "Empty Highway," which broods and croons and bleeds with the best of any blues ballad on record. "Baby Blue Eyes" is a blue-grass tinged number that evokes the soulful country traditions of an Allison Krauss or the Dixie Chicks. She moves beyond romantic introspection for some powerful social and spiritual commentary on both "Secular Songs" and the explosive eight-minute-long closer "Something's Gotta Blow." In the biographical "Mama Papa," fans get a rare treat as Armatrading pays tribute to her birth island of St. Kitts and the industrious parents who taught her to: "Play hard/ Fight fair/ Live life/ And love the Lord."
From the very beginning of Joan Armatrading's amazing career, starting with the 1972 release of WHATEVER'S FOR US, the rhythms and colors of the blues and jazz have helped define the brilliant depths and substance of her work. Also from the very beginning, Armatrading has demonstrated an uncanny ability to employ various musical trends and genres to amplify the uniqueness of her own creative voice. Those two traits serve her genius exceedingly well on INTO THE BLUES, a CD very much on its way to becoming a celebrated classic.
by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)
Simple Stellar.... May 1, 2007
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
What a breathe of fresh air! Labeled as her first blues album, Joan Armatrading's, "Into the Blues" is a modern blues endeavor that further showcases how great Joan is at what she does. Sure it's different if one compares it to her previous albums, but "Into the Blues" is a noteworthy effort that introduces us to something newly familiar.
What I loved most about "Into the Blues" was how it reminded me of the album experience. Truthfully, I enjoy music more when each song takes me to another place, but still maintains a cohesive relationship with the other songs. I like thinking of an album as a book and all tracks as its chapters. Lately however, I have found myself cherry-picking my favorites because I have not seen enough of an album relationship worth exploring. However, this album is an album. Each songs flows from one to another very harmoniously.
The single, "Woman in Love" is a great pick with its a edginess and rock'in guitar rifts. Although, I have to say my two favorites are Secular Songs and Baby Blue Eyes.
Secular Songs is just a beautiful hymn that is the definition of the blues for me. Slightly grassrooted melodies with gospel choruses included, it quintessentially belongs in the New Orleans blues scene. At the same time, Baby Blue Eyes showcases Joan's effortless guitar playing. Simply Stellar...
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