"This is femme pop extraordinaire: as changeable and mysterious as early Nico recordings or David Roback's collaborations with Kendra Smith in his pre-Mazzy Star band, Opal­-wistfully psychedelic, slightly nostalgic and very seductive."

The greatest aspect of the Detroit sound is there's no such thing. Iggy Pop, MC5 and Berry Gordy defined the sound in wildly different ways, but the quality they shared - and still screaming through - is passion. And while the White Stripes is the latest to focus attention on the Motor City, there's still a diverse and unclassifiable scene in the city that refuses to follow the money. Denise James is a French native who grew up in Detroit; uses that broad experience as the sonic foundation for her sophomore album, drawing on Serge Gainsbourg's romantic pulse and the jangly pop of London circa 1966. With able production and performance assistance from Mathew Smith (himself a membor of the Americana Volebeats and the psych-pop Outrageous Cherry), James makes pop that swings and shimmers with retro authority and indie energy.

Detroit, eh? Another garage wannabe riding the White Stripes bandwagon? Don’t think so. Denise was an integral part of the pre-Stripes Motor City scene of the early ‘90s that harked back to classic ‘60s pop. She’s fronted, guested and recorded with a host of local Detroit bands, from His Name Is Alive to The Dirt Eaters and The Jills. “Detroit has always been a good place to be,” she confirms. “Detroit has always been a good place to be,” she confirms. “I’m glad the world is finally looking in.” Oh, and she’s French.

French? So What’s I’historie then? Taught piano at age six by her maternal grandmother, Denise was weaned on Gallic warblers like Francoise Hardy, Mireille Mathieu, Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet. “I especially loved Edith Piaf. It was fascinating to me because at the time – the early 70’s – everyone had forgotten this music. When I heard Edith sing, it gave me the chills. Still does. “Her eponymous 2001 debut on Alan McGee’s Poptones label brought to mind the seductive West Coast breeze of late-60’s cult sister act Wendy & Bonnie. But her latest – ‘It’s Not Enough To Love’ – is a very different animal.

How so? For those still weeping for the demise of vintage girl-group pop caked in mascara and drenched in torrential reverb, Denise is The Shirelles, Lesley Gore and Ronnie Spector rolled into one luscious honeydripping bundle. “Female singers from the ‘60s took command of their songs and the stage,” she says. “And they could sing. It’s very empowering to watch a woman hold an audience’s attention without compromising herself.”

A retro ‘60s songbird, you say? So is she “Dancing in The Street” or “Walking In The Rain”? Given the new LP’s love-lorn Spectorish grandeur (thanks to producer Matthew Smith, frontman of Detroit’s Outgrageous Cherry), Denise’s songs are the slow-roll sound of the loneliest teardrop. “Absolutely Sad”. “Love Has Got Me Crying Again”. Need I go on?

Bless. Must exhaust her being permanently broken-hearted? “People tell me how sad they feel after hearing my music,” Denise confesses, “But I don’t see it as a bad thng. Sadness is not the opposite of happiness. I see it as another dimension. There’s beauty in sadness.”

The title of this set does not really inspire confidence and although the auburn haired Ms. James looks suitably sultry and reflective, the whole package looks like a compilation of hits by some obscure German vocal chorale. However, on closer examination, it transpires that Ms. James - a keen follower of the French singer Francoise Hardy - has decided to launch her career with her very own tribute to the 1960's; the reefer jacket is the give-away. Ms. James sounds like a combination of Marianne Faithful, Niko and Jackie DeShannon, while accompaniment comes courtesy of a bunch of musicians that sound just like the Searchers.

Good tunes abound such as 'Love Has Got Me Crying Again,''No More Goodbyes,' and 'Hold On This Time.' But the penultimate track, 'Just Like That,' is an instrumental that sounds like the Searchers doing an impression of the Shadows and this sets the stage for 'Your Every Word.' Opening with tambourine way up front in the mix which sounds as if it should have Phil Spector's Wall of Sound embellishing it; that illusion is shattered as Matthew Smith picks up his trumpet and rips out a perfectly modulated solo that Herb Alpert would have been proud of. In fact, I'n not quite sure why I'm reviewing it in this magazine, but wait, yes I do, it's because the Searchers were a big influence on the Byrds. Phew, that was close, and yes, I rather like it.

The old fashion line is: if you wore it the first time around, don't wear the second. Luckily, that proviso does not apply to music. If there was a certain sweet Carnaby Street Brit pop sound that you just loved, feel free to buy a new album with a similar feel - like Denise James' It's Not Enough To Love. James is from Detroit but that's kind of like Liverpool. Her debut solo album is like listening to Petula Clark singing with Bananarama. Its ten swoony tracks will stop you in your tracks. James delivers a 1960s weekend that's retro and timeless. Hell, there's even "Just Like That," an instrumental where producer Matthew Smith's guitar sounds like Dick Dale surfing behind a ferry on the Mersey.

Uninspired packaging, a throwaway album title, a placid '60s-style pop formula and a love-hurts theme. But after a while all those tambourine rattles, Shangri-La harmonies, and jingle-jangly guitars take hold, and soon the mirror ball spotlighting sweaty teens on the gym dance floor becomes crystal clear. Denise James has the voice of an angel, hair for a swarm of bees to make a home in, and the magic that ruled AM airways back in the day. Burt Bacharach used to pull this off perfectly. A throwback? Yeah, what of it?

"Before I ever went into a studio, I had a four-track and I used to record on that. I hadn’t taught myself guitar yet, so it was mostly keyboards and piano and vocals, with a lot of harmonies," remembers Denise James.

From such humble home-recorded beginnings comes one of Detroit’s true hidden musical treasures. Retaining the keen sense of harmony and a candid sense of introspection from her early days, James has become a haunting country and Midwestern singer-songwriter. Her self-titled album showcases her knack for writing country-tinged classics. While guitars jangle in timeless folk-rock fashion, her voice ranges from the desperation of "Who Sent You Love" to the charm of "I Still Long For You." There’s only one problem with the record: It remains unreleased. Still, she remains undeterred in pursuing her songcraft, forging ahead with the support of her bandmates: drummer Patrick Pantano, Volebeats bassist Russ Ledford and ubiquitous Volebeats guitarist Matt Smith. In the early ‘90s, James worked with His Name Is Alive, and took Karen Neal’s place as vocalist for the Dirt Eaters (one of the great, and, sadly, barely documented bands of that era). "Darlin’," James’ brilliant country lament that she recorded with HNIA, still pops up in her live shows, which thankfully have begun to appear once a month rather than every now and then. Like her other tunes, it holds its own with those of such similarly dreamy psych-folk-country greats as Kendra Smith, Barbara Manning and Edith Frost. Lyrically, she’s as astonishing as any of the aforementioned greats, too, with her ballads of love, loss and longing. As James says, "I always laugh when I think about it, but I think there’s the word ‘love’ in every song. It’s that basic human element of wanting to connect with other people. Trying to get to there, but not ever really getting there."

Hopefully she’ll get there soon, at least as far as getting her music to the world, and her talent will get the recognition it deserves.

This album is weird. No, not in the way that that freak in the pink camisole and stretch pants who stares in your bedroom window every night is weird. No, weird in a good way. It's another offering from Detroit's Rainbow Quartz label, which means that it'll obviously be very 1960s influenced and indeed, it is. There's lots of twangy guitars and muddled production, which give the disc a good deal of resonance and charm. In fact, I haven't seen this much reverb on vocals since I spent an evening at the Lee Garden Chinese Buffet and Kareokee Bar on Bay Street. If you need a more modern touchstone, think the lo-fi slop that Kim Deal released with The Amps or frighteningly, a less-braindead version of The Shaggs. Seriously! The songs are quite pretty but I see them appealing moreso to pretentious twits in half-sized pleather jackets than to swooning fop-haired chickies living in modern apartments. To that end, members of Detroit heroes like Outrageous Cherry, The Go and The Volebeats appear on the disc. It's basically girlie soundz for both guys and dolls, the type of album that mightn't make grandma clench. Definitely worth looking into.

Detroit singer Denise James combines a few different strains of ‘60s music to create a hauntingly winning brand of pop. James, working with producer Matthew Smith of Outrageous Cherry, writes songs in the girl group tradition. Basic simple R & B based pop. She's not a Ronnie Spector-esque powerhouse, but she has enough sweetness to conjure up a lot of fine British singers from the Swingin' London days.

The twist on this is that the songs are performed in jangly folk-rock settings. At times, the music touches on French pop from that era (which is a good place to note that James was born in France, and moved to the States while still a young ‘un), with even hints of the early Velvet Underground. Smith does not have the reverb setting as high as on his own Outrageous Cherry records, but there's still a bit of that echo chamber effect going on. His greatest contribution is an array of lead guitar figures that decorate every song.

If any song defines this album thematically, it would be the slow tempo shuffle of "Love Has Got Me Crying Again". This is typical of the downcast look at affairs of the heart. James, who wrote all of the songs on this disc, finds a song that is part mid-tempo Merseybeat jangle, part yearning girl singer pop. Moreover, her vocal is world weary, with just enough energy to really capture the truism that no matter how much love breaks your heart, one will suffer just hoping to taste it once again. The bridge on the song arcs like a fleeting ray of sunshine, only exacerbating the hurt.

In the same vein lyrically, "It's Not Enough to Love" is a pop dirge, with acoustic guitars, shuffling drums and an organ creating a grey atmosphere. James's phrasing is terse and economical, parsing out her plaintive observations. The sole color in the song comes from the lead guitar ornamentation. The song builds up to James's repeated refrain: "It's not enough/to be in love/I want to be/everything."

James shows off her femme fatale side on "Don't Let Her Go This Time". Or should I say, her "Femme Fatale" side. This number sounds somewhat like the Velvet Underground classic, slowed down just a little bit. If anything, "Don't Let Her Go..." reveals how deep some of Lou Reed's early rock and roll roots went, as this song certainly has that Velvet feel, but is rooted in an earlier tradition, and it sounds just right.

While much of this album is similar in tone to some of Frank Sinatra's classic work with Nelson Riddle (lonely and brooding), there are some happier numbers. "Come Home to Me" has James's most energetic vocal. The song is mid-tempo, but I could easily hear this being done with a faster Motown beat -- the melody and chorus would certainly be up to the task. The opening cut, "Hold on This Time", is also relatively jaunty. Note, however, that these are the first two songs on the album -- the rest of the album is pretty much Teardrop City.

With one exception. "Just Like That" is a six-minute instrumental that serves as the penultimate cut on this 10-track collection. This song is too long and misplaced on the disc. One more Velvet-y song ("Your Every Word"), and this album is over. I'm not sure where the track should have gone, but it's not in the right place.

Oh, one other problem with "Just Like That". James doesn't sing on it. While there may be other singers with a lot more range, James invests her lyrics with just the right touch. While this album may be downbeat, it's not a downer. Part of this may be due to some of the nifty chord changes that James tucks in unexpected places. This is a new angle on an old sound, and I like it very much.

Denise James has been sailing quietly on the sub-currents of the eclectic Detroit music scene for some time now. Gingerly making her way out of nearby coffeehouses and sleepy Hamtramck bars, she is, however, no stranger to the international music community. After a brief stint on Alan McGee's promising Poptones label (before a number of acts were regrettably dropped after the Queen of England pulled her stock due to post-terror world economic conditions), James now finds herself on a different label with a new lease on love. Detroit's "now generation" of musicians, raised on the diverse commercial radio the city was once know for, includes songwriters and performers who are currently making important music that colorfully stands up to modern-day media-conglomerate sterilization. James is one of them, and she's willing to meet the challenge by singing comfortably within her own style, a mix of '60s pop, country balladry and indie-gaze sensibilities. It's Not Enough to Love contains intelligent lyrics on the complexities of relationships, pristine backing vocals and drum and bass work that create a rolling hillside terrain, on which the brilliant guitar moves like young teens playing in the summer sun. This record is a dreamy gem. Denise James plays Club Bart on February 25.

Reason to Buy: Great records transcend local boundaries. In other words, otherworldly.

Best Listening Experience: "Absolutely Sad."

:: 4.5/5 ::

Denise James is a real talent; a double threat singer and songwriter. A strong 60s influence runs through the disc that is sometimes Spector-esque and other times hints at a number of the classic female vocalists that have come before her like Bobbie Gentry, Francoise Hardy or Dusty. The tunes sometimes lurk a bit on the down side but when she keeps the tempo steady as on the opener "Hold On This Time" she threatens to take our hearts by storm.

It says something of the esteem that the Frenchwoman Denise James is held in within Detroit where she now lives that the cream of the city's local talent have queued up to take part in this her second album. Featuring the efforts of various members of the Dirtbombs, Come-ons and Outrageous Cherry and engineered by Jim Diamond who's worked with the White Stripes, it's far from just another bland singer songwriter effort.

Most of the tracks have cute as a button 60s melodies and sugar sweet harmonies permeating their grooves. There's also hints of the ethereal indie sound of the likes of Mazzy Star and the country tinged folk of the Byrds. A lovingly crafted and utterly impressive dreamy pop record.

What Neko Case did for country torch songs, Detroit's Denise James does for shimmery sixties pop. On her second album, James and producer Matthew Smith (whose previous credits include Andre Williams's garage-soul classic Silky and membership in Outrageous Cherry and the Volebeats) breathe new life into the vintage sounds of the Brill Building and Phil Spector.

It's Not Enough To Love is hardly nostalgic, though.  The combination of Smith's production and jangly guitar with James's mature songs and mesmerizing vocals lifts the record out of the retro ghetto it might otherwise be consigned to. Petula Clark never broke your heart like this.

Thematically, James is writing from the perspective of "The Other Woman," longing for something she can never truly win. She consoles herself in the sublime "Love Has Got Me Crying Again," breaks down completely in the hauntingly monochromatic "Absolutely Sad," and resigns herself to heartbreak in the title track.

It's Not Enough To Love gets to the heart of what makes classic pop so classic in the first place.

The greatest downfall of contemporary pop music is that when it looks to the past for inspiration, it either misses the point completely or becomes a vulgar rip-off. Too often bands want so much to sound like their heroes that they stop sounding like anything genuine. Thankfully, there’s Denise James. James — who did some time in His Name Is Alive — has been around the Detroit scene for quite a while, honing her cool vibe and vocal chops. Sweet and sad — songs range from "Love Has Got Me Crying Again" to "Absolutely Sad" to "Don’t Let Her Go This Time" — James isn’t working at being a throwback to ‘60s England or France. She doesn’t have to because she just gets it. She can put a tear in her voice when it needs to be there, she can stand proud when that’s called for, too. Like Darlene Love, Wanda Jackson and a wealth of women singers before her, Denise James is the real deal.

Despite its parallel reputation for having birthed the future of music in the form of techno, Detroit is also widely recognized as North America's foremost spawning ground of rock and roll curators.  Long before the White Stripes cast the city's unwitting legion of garage bands into the global spotlight, the likes of Outrageous Cherry, the Hentchmen and the Dirtbombs played music that conjured a swinging '60s heyday its creators hadn't been alive to know first-hand.  Denise James is similarly backward-glancing, but rather than drawing from the gutbucket Motor City rock of her peers, her interest is in the rarefied, alternately tough and tender pop of Phil Spector-styled girl groups Bobbie Gentry and Francoise Hardy.  To mimic the sophisticated production of such impeccable influences would be challenge enough; that James has also written songs that complement their legacy is occasion to uncork bottles and sit in rapt, slack-jawed attention.  James' voice sustains a calm detachment throughout this, her second album (an elusive debut was released by Poptones in 2002), but the sumptuous, romantic melancholy of at least half these songs (especially the neatly titled "Absolutely Sad") means to leave bruises in the sweetest possible way.

There's a lot of despondency in this album.  What draws you to those kinds of songs?
It took me by surprise when people started commenting on how sad the music made them feel.  I'd performed a show, maybe five or six years ago, with some new material, and someone in the audience came up to me and said., "I feel so sad now, I want to drive my car off a cliff."

Was that meant as a compliment?
I think it evoked something inside them.  I think a lot of artist find their creativity in [sadness] and are prone to really feeling it and that's where a lot of expression comes from -- their frustration in dealing with a percentage of the world that doesn't understand it.  But I don't sit down to necessarily write music that makes people sad.

Any insight as to why Detroit musicians seem to have such a heightened appreciation and understanding of '60s music?
Boy, I wish I could say, but I think you're right.  I guess I could have done anything else -- even country music -- but it was just a natural propensity for me to write this way.

 

His Name Is Alive vocalist/songwriter Denise James has been described as a protégé of maverick Motor City musician/producer Matthew Smith (Outrageous Cherry/Slumber Party/the Go). For those of you familiar with Smith's now-somewhat-predictable predilection for dowsing his own sonic productions in cavernous reverb, you'll no doubt understand why much of this dulcet-toned debut sounds like it was recorded in a dirigible hanger. The emphasis here, however, is where it should be, placed squarely on Ms. James' comely understated vocals, which sound, at times, like a girl group singer from the Populuxe era, or other times, like Nico or some folky Greenwich Village urchin with a fondness for French poets and hand-rolled cigarettes. For the most part, there's only sparse accompaniment from Smith on backing vocals, lead guitars, bass, and organ, and Scott Michalski on barely heard drums. — Bryan Thomas

Denise James, perhaps more than most Rainbow Quartz artists, embodies their mission statement, "...guitar-pop and rock with a jangly psychedelic edge, as well as solid singer/songwriters and bands with a cerebral and artsy bent." At times she brings to mind Stone Ponies and at others Voice Of The Beehive. Never in my experience has a singer/songwriter sounded so fresh, alive and new, yet been such a great fit for an AM Oldies station's playlist. All the tunes have a soft jangly guitar and tambourine sound to them, except the cool surf instrumental, "Just Like That." This is the album for anyone who has ever sang along to any song on AM radio. Her songwriting is strong and confident, so expect great things to come from this Motor City "femme next door" (somewhere between Nico and Petula Clark). It's Not Enough To Love is a timeless album that sounds great today and would have sounded phenomenal 40 years ago.