Our Bright Future | 
| Artist: Tracy Chapman
Label: Atlantic
Category: Music
List Price: $18.98
Buy New: $8.74
You Save: $10.24 (54%)
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 215
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
MPN: 514061
UPC: 075678982125
EAN: 0075678982125
ASIN: B001ED7C5I
Release Date: November 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Sing For You | | • | I Did It All | | • | Save Us All | | • | Our Bright Future | | • | For A Dream | | • | Thinking Of You | | • | A Theory | | • | Conditional | | • | Something To See (No War) | | • | The First Person On Earth | | • | Spring |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
On her 20th anniversary as a recording artist, Tracy Chapman has written one of the most powerful and moving albums of her career. Tracy worked with producer Larry Klein, who has produced albums by Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock, and Madeleine Peyroux.
Album Description
Our Bright Future is the 8th album, released in 2008. Produced by Tracy Chapman and Larry Klein. Tracy Chapman is a truly individual voice on the modern musical landscape. An eloquent teller of stories that are at once intimate and universal, Chapman has created a body of work that has been as consistently compelling as it is honest and uncompromising
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
A mixed bag with different feelings. November 12, 2008
Grover (Atlanta,GA)
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
At 44, Tracy Chapman has written another of her archetypal protest songs, one which makes its point eloquently but is delivered in somewhat sleepy fashion.
The title track turns out to be more bittersweet than its title suggests - the full lyric is "our bright future is in our past". The tastefully downbeat arrangement defuses the angry, questioning lyrics, robbing them of potential power and turning what could have been a trenchant anti-war song into a downcast acceptance of the inevitable.
"Something To See" is another protest song that doesn't protest too hard.
Unlike Sam Cooke on A Change Is Gonna Come, Chapman does not sing with passionate conviction. Even though it is all there in the lyrics, she never strays from her trademark mild delivery.
It's been 20 years since "Fast Car" first alerted the world to Tracy Chapman.
Eight albums later, not a lot has changed. That voice is intact, although her lyrical concerns are now more focused on love. A posse of veteran players ensure that "Our Bright Future" has a professional sheen, everything tasteful and underplayed. This type of well-mannered pop/folk is perhaps not to everyone's taste, but if you are in a quiet mood, these sweet and earnest melodies might touch a lost.
With a lush production by Larry Klein (frequent musical collaborator, and ex-husband, of Joni Mitchell, and producer of female singers like Holly Cole, Mary White, Shawn Colvin, Julia Fordham and Madeleine Peyroux), the result could easily be predicted.
Despite the optimistic-sounding title, Chapman has not come over all saccharine, though.
Her strident earnestness has been tempered, leaving a wry warmth that turns even such political numbers as "Something to See (No War)" into something intimate and beguiling.
A highlight is the older-and-wiser sigh of "A Theory". This is actually a pretty witty number, in which Chapman woos a potential lover using cerebral terminology ("in theory I could propose and in theory you could affirm that you were meant for me").
Yes,songs namecheck Katrina, Obama et al - but there's also a playful, reflective quality as Chapman looks back at the way music has shaped her life. She is terrific on obsessive love, while on "Conditional", a riposte to commitment-phobes, she rails, "There are strings attached... I want something back".
The arrangement has a light, jazzy feel with sashaying clarinet and tinkling piano.
"Our Bright Future" is a potentially stimulating album, but it has been rendered in a gentle hush-and-rustle soothing manner that it will eventually wash over the listener when it could have better expressed the challenges of these particular, difficult times.
Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964
Tracy of the Autumnal Voice reminds us again why we can't stop listening, even when the songs are not her best. November 12, 2008
Storylover (Philadelphia, PA USA)
13 out of 17 found this review helpful
There is so much to love about this album--but it doesn't quite reach Tracy's highest standards of excellence. Tracy Chapman has one of the most distinctive and warm voices in music, and from a straight vocal standpoint, everything is as beautiful as it has ever been. Her vibrato is as strong as ever, no hint of effort on her part. Every note seems channeled from some inner well of grace. Her intonations are perfect--floating over her guitar at moments of emotional delicacy, punching on the beat when she decries injustice. Her lyrics are poignant, insightful, but not searing. She no longer sounds as angry as she once was, but just sadder. This is perhaps understandable--she is more than 20 years on from where we first her Talkin' 'bout a Revolution, but I know that the fire that she has showed in the past is still there, and I was hoping for a little more to rise to the surface.
This is not an album that you can get on the first listen, and indeed, the melodies improve and stick in the memory more with repeated spins, but there is nothing here that will even rise as high as "Bang Bang Bang" in terms of memorable tunes.
Ultimately, if you are a fan of this amazing lady, then you are going to enjoy this disc a lot. If you find that the last several of her discs have started sounding similar one to another, then this disc will hold no surprises for you. I don't think that is a bad thing, but it is a true thing. Tracy has been our travelling companion for two decades, reminding us of how love hurts but is still worth it (mostly), of how America has some real wonders, but how we have a great responsibility incurred by simply living here, and how sometimes people are not what they seem. She was right then, she is right now. This is a good disc, a warm disc, but a sad disc. On Conditional, Tracy sums up exactly what is required to love this album well: "There are strings attatched/tied to me/I want something back/if you agree/to be in love with me". If you agree to give back the effort it takes to love these songs, they will deepen for you and make this disc something to keep warm by this winter; if you give it a cursory listen, you might miss the point entirely. I know that Tracy can do better than this, but for now, this is a beautiful interlude, and I look forward to seeing more from her in the future.
 THIS WAS SO HARD FOR ME TO REVIEW! November 27, 2008
Erich Heidrich (Kansas City)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
When I say I'm a Tracy Chapman fan, that's an understatement. The last time I saw her was in Tucson for the Westward Swing Vote. She was, once again, amazing. I think I'm simply the fan of Tracy and her guitar. I think her past two albums, Where You Live and Let It Rain are my all time favorites and I haven't loved one of her albums that much since Crossroads. They both left me singing the tunes and every song had such an emotional message that made me think. I was INCREDIBLY excited for Our Bright Future and I can't figure out what happened.
Every song blends into the next and they all sound the same. It has many religious undertones, which is fine if I wanted a Christian album. Her voice is IMMACULATE and still gives me goosebumps. I guess I miss the variety of all her songs on an album. The same thing seems to be said on most of the songs on this album. I do like I Did It All and Conditional but I can't find my place in the others because they all sound the same. This is SO hard for me to say. I guess I miss those heart wrenching and simplistic acoustic songs like The Promise, Be Careful Of My Heart, Don't Dwell, Goodbye, In the Dark, The Love That You Had, or For You. They were greatly missed on this album and that is classic Tracy. I still plan on going wherever she is close to KC but I hope she does much from her past albums. Still love her!
 yeah- i am the first-for this great 20th anniversy album. November 12, 2008
C. Le (Sunny CA)
4 out of 13 found this review helpful
it was 1988 i was in the junior high, one magical day i heard the song
fast car on the radio....this was a radio dominated by the new kids
so i was mesmerized by something so great and different. an unknown
songwriter comes out of nowhere to delight music-audiophiles everywhere.
20 years later she comes back with her best work in her career- i saw
her sing/jay leno/tonight show -sing for you and again just totally mesmerized again. wow she looks as good as she did in 1988.
tc all
chris
For a Dream December 5, 2008
John C. Bergeron (Saint Paul, MN United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Attempting to write a worthy review of a single Tracy Chapman release is difficult, in the same way it would be hard to try and define a person you deeply love in a single paragraph; there's always the desire to go back and forth in time, the necessity to find a more perfect word or phrase or example deserving of the one who has so captured your heart. And so it is with this remarkable woman. Tracy Chapman has a voice equally capable of soothing a frightened child into a sound slumber, or awakening a generation to a social emergency. And as her muse has led her deep into a third decade of artistry, those wise enough to have accompanied her on her ascendant journey have undoubedly had their musical world deepened, ripened and enriched. Music should move you, but sometimes it should also shake you. Tracy knows this. If she'd not chosen to do music, I have little doubt that she would have found some other means of reaching us with her unwavering commitment to love, peace and social justice. Thankfully, she chose music, which for me is the most direct and accessible vehicle for inspiration.
I was immediately struck (and, I'll admit, a bit surprised) by the title of this release. It begged a number of questions, which is, of course, what Art should do. Is she referring to a lover? Could she possibly be so optimistic about our country's future? But just as I stated, a phrase-or in this case, a song title-could hardly hope to explain everything being said in this beautiful collection. Throughout, Tracy walks a narrow line between sadness and anger, but also with an ever-present undercurrent of hope that our "bright future may come to pass." There are personal stories, and there are songs trying to make sense of what has, and continues to go on across the planet. Through it all--the pain, the anger, the losses and the fears, she conveys, and convincingly, a genuine belief in what is still possible. Perhaps it is the most extraordinary thing about Chapman's music, and one of the reasons why people are still listening, waiting to hear what she has to say next. I think what I most love about Tracy is her ability to put her arms around any issue, large or small, personal or political, and somehow, with that rich and remarkable voice, make me feel that she is in my presence, breathing, singing only to me.
Three years ago I was privileged to see Tracy Chapman in concert, and to do so with a woman who, believe it or not, loves Tracy even more than I do. There were moments that night when the considerable distance between the stage and our seats seemed to go away, and it felt to me as if Tracy was singing only to us. And for a few minutes there, I knew she really was...
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