I am fascinated by the beauty of decay. On four separate occasions I was privileged to visit a college professor of mine at her summer home in Belturbet, Ireland. It is a country house on a working dairy farm with all the dust, dung, and cobwebs you could want in such a rustic setting. Sometimes it feels like the earth is slowly reclaiming the whole structure as the trees and creeping vines seem as if they are playing a long game with an eye to devouring it. But each year it presses on, an eventual ruin, in all its spectacular and decrepit glory. When it comes to music, I have an epicurean taste for the various stages of Bob Dylan's vocals, as they, too, have lapsed into irredeemable disrepair. Much of the music he has produced in the twilight of his career has a timeless quality that is well-complemented by his ancient-sounding rasp. "Not Dark Yet," "High Water (for Charley Patton)," and "Nettie Moore" from three of his most recent studio albums are exemplary specimens all. Sadly, with his most recent album, Together Through Life, those spooky vocal cords of his finally gave up the ghost. Johnny Cash, too, experienced a late-period revival and managed to get much of his physical decline committed to tape throughout all those Rick Rubin-helmed LPs for the American Recordings imprint. At their best, his performances on those albums are hypnotic. In many cases it is the eerie, wizened sound of a man singing about death as if he's already met his own. What makes Dylan and Cash successful, of course, is the perfect pairing of sound with subject. Who can better bellow "We'll Meet Again" than the man for whom the afterlife is closer than that distant shore? Now, the consummate singer can adapt any song to her style or adapt her style to any song. In her prime, this was certainly the case with Billie Holiday. On Lady in Satin, she is not in her prime. Recorded about a year and a half before she died, much of her range is gone and there is an audible strain when she tries for the higher and lower notes. Her voice does invest these torch songs with an emotional vulnerability that is fitting for many of the lyrics, but not all of them. Again, it's all about how well you marry what you're singing with how you're singing it. The trick with these lover's laments is to sound wounded, but not defeated. Unfortunately, after being ransacked by decades of disease and drug abuse, Holiday was out of tricks. Grade: C
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