Beauty & Crime

"New York is a woman, she'll make you cry, but to her you're just another guy." For that line alone I recommend Suzanne Vega's latest record, Beauty & Crime, which is a very personal document about her own life and her hometown, New York City.

Suzanne and I go way back. I first heard about her when I was into the folk music scene back in the mid-eighties. I had her first record and saw her many times in concert before she had her time in the mainstream sun, when Luka was a big hit (could it be that it was 20 years ago? Yikes.) Since then I've bought all of her records, and it's been interesting to see her develop from a coffeehouse folk act to a performer who defies genres. Her latest album is on Blue Note records, and there is a jazzy flavor to it, but I don't envy the record store employee who has to figure out what category to put her in.

Vega's last album, Songs in Red and Gray, was dealing with divorce. This record has some happier moments. She is recently remarried, and sings about that on Bound. She also has a teenage-daughter, who gets a song of her own. But Vega also sings about loss, particularly about her brother Tim, who died in 2002, and to whom the record is dedicated. In one of the many songs about New York, she has one called Ludlow Street, where Tim lived, and one of the lyrics mention how empty it feels to walk down the street and not see him there. She also dedicates a song called Edith Wharton's Figurines to author Olivia Goldsmith, who died during a botched plastic surgery procedure. There are also references to 9/11, in the form of Angel in the Doorway and Anniversary. There is also a song about the relationship between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, who fought all the time except when they were making love.

Vega has always been an interesting lyricist and her voice, which is a vibrato-less, breathy whisper much of the time, brings an appropriate eerie yet sophisticated attitude to her songs. This is a fine album, both elegant and playful and deeply heart-felt, music for grownups.