A Singer Making an Amazing Comeback
Paul Bloede | 07/21/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Judy Dyble was one of the most beautiful and talented female rock performers, of the classic rock era. She was a remarkable singer, with a fabulous and disciplined soprano voice. Although I was only a young child during those years, subsequent analysis convinces me of this. One need only buy "Fairport Convention" and "Trader Horne: Morning Way" CDs, as well as watch YouTube videos of Judy with Fairport Convention, in order to be convinced of her talent and beauty.
But she dropped out of music for many, many years. Then, she emerged again in the mid-2000s with three solo CDs, which I should explore again but at the time I felt to be strangely unsatisfying: CDs entitled "Enchanted Garden", "Spindle", and "Whorl".
However, this release, "Talking with Strangers", needs to be viewed as one of the finest rock music artistic statements of 2009, and evidence finally of an amazing comeback by Judy into the music business. Judy describes in this music and these liner notes very well and on multiple levels, the issue of her leaving singing for so long a period of time. And there are other excellent themes touched on in these songs, which feature many other fine session-musicians.
The bottom line is the depth and beauty of these songs is beyond words. You want to hug Judy and have her be your friend.
Musically, the best comparison to this incredible CD, but a very far-off one, is the music of The Carpenters. Karen Carpenter was a contemporary of Judy, also beautiful and a fine singer. Her music was friendly and made you want her to be your friend, a lot of people could relate to The Carpenters songs. But on "Talking with Strangers" you get an older musician making a comeback, in Judy, still singing really quite well, and producing songs that are warm, friendly and make you want to be her friend, except that these songs are much deeper and penetrating and serious and multi-faceted than most of The Carpenters' songs (no discredit to the latter musicians; this comparison is actually a very big stretch and I don't admit to being overly familiar with The Carpenters' music to begin with, or an authority on them). One other thing, in my limited knowledge about Karen that I would posit, would be she may have been even somewhat more naturally gifted than any singer of the time, including Judy, in the qualities of her alto in her case voice, but I think sometimes Karen was a bit undisciplined in her singing, relying too much on her natural God-given vocal timbres alone, all in contrast to Judy, who is always completely in control of her voice.
One really can't go wrong in buying this worthy-of-all-honors 2009 comeback CD by Judy Dyble. It really will be fascinating to see where her musical recording adventures take her next."
Track Listings (7) - Disc #1