Susan Christie-Paint a Lady (acid-folk album from 1968) FLAC

That this album went unreleased for so many decades is a crime, because it's a genuine jewel from start to last. Susan Christie should have had a sterling career & many more albums ... but such are the vagaries of the music business & Fate, it seems.

Still, the album is here, and it is indeed wonderful. While the songs are often in very different styles, her voice holds everything together, so that it sounds cohesive, rather than being a mere hodgepodge of random tracks. From the plaintive loneliness of "Rainy Day" to a truly chilling cover of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" to the epic freakout "Yesterday, Where's My Mind" -- a freakout that actually works rather than being an embarrassment, by the way -- everything here is fully realized & deeply satisfying. There's strong production that's never overdone, leaving plenty of room for Susan's distinctive voice, which can handle the tender, the passionate, or the wounded with equal control.

Let me especially single out the two final tracks. "When Love Comes" is what a pure pop song should be: simple, filled with childlike joy, never mawkish or winking cynically at the listener. Meanwhile, "No One Can Hear You Cry" would make Burt Bacharach proud to claim it as his own: sweeping, quietly anguished, yet somehow peaceful as well. There's a world of difference between those two songs, but Susan Christie sounds perfectly at home on both of them.