CD Review

Amilia K Spicer
Like An Engine
(AllSpice (Independent))

Spicer plays keyboards and has chosen a pop foundation for most of these songs, but her writing is poetic and, as she describes it "intimate" in the way it addresses the listener. There is a sensuality to her work and many of the songs are openly erotic - something you don't hear much at the coffeehouse or folk festival since the days of Suzanne Vega or Leonard Cohen. The title track starts:

Well the night takes your fingers and it licks them. Takes your hands and sticks them
Under the darkest blackness where they know a little less. The night is just what you make it
a heavenly body there naked...

The long unpredictable lines are part of the overall effect - in Spicer's universe, the whole world takes part in love's simplest acts and declarations. Not all the songs are equally successful. I'm still not sure about "Come Over Me" whose last refrain is "I have a feeling down in my Mexico / Taste my tequila - you can't get your own." In general, though, Spicer makes the lovers' world a place of visions and every failed encounter leaves her characters with more than they started with. -HB