Beneath The Velvet Sun "Everywhere I go/You know/I take you with me, sweet darling" --("Everywhere I Go")
Success hasn't changed Shawn Mullins, it certainly hasn't changed the way he creates his music.
Oh, sure the Atlanta native gets a tad freaked out when female fans come up to him with "Shimmer"--his international hit from the Songs From Dawson's Creek soundtrack album--tattooed across their chests. After all, the singer-songwriter has become a bit of an unlikely sex symbol since his now-RIAA platinum 1998 Columbia Records debut, Soul's Core. Originally released on his own SMG label (which had released seven previous albums since its formation in 1990), Soul's Core produced a smash single in "Lullaby," a drum loop-laden, electropop narrative slice-of-life about Hollywood. After ten years playing in and around his hometown, the single was added to the playlist by his hometown radio station, hurtling Mullins into an "overnight" success story which took the better part of a decade to unfold.
"This is definitely a different record, but it's still me," drawls the one-time Army lieutenant about Beneath the Velvet Sun, his first album since last year's The First Ten Years, a compilation which included music from his indie releases as well as a pair of covers from hit soundtrack albums in George Harrison's "What Is Life" (from "Big Daddy") and David Bowie's "Changes" (from "The Faculty"). "The process is still the same, and so is the way I write."
A master storyteller, Mullins is a veritable fly-on-the-wall, a fan of songwriters like Ricki Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and, of course, Bob Dylan. A stone R&B fan who appreciates a good groove, he counts Prince, Gil Scott-Heron, Isaac Hayes, James Brown, Percy Sledge and Otis Redding among his faves. And his country preferences lean towards Hank Williams and Kris Kristofferson. On Beneath the Velvet Sun, Mullins, working with a major league budget for the first time (not to mention collaborators like producer Julian Raymond, mixer Chris Lord-Alge and guest performers Shawn Colvin and Shelby Lynne), was able to explore some expanded musical turf.
There's a little something for everyone on Shawn's enlarged "Velvet" canvas and musical palette--the Byrdsy, chiming guitars, heartland power-pop and plaintive falsetto of the first single, "Everywhere I Go"; the honky-tonk piano and closely observed details of "Up All Night"; the country-tinged "Somethin' To Believe In"; the atmospheric trip-hop of "Valentine"; the Elton John gospel and rich Buckmaster strings of "We Run"; the "Shaft" disco-funk string overture and wide-screen scope of "North On I-95"; the Neil Young-meets-Hank Williams swagger and "Maggie May" mandolin of "Lonesome I Know You"; the dusty spaghetti western twang of "Santa Fe," and the Beatlesque aural montage and Mellotron woodwinds of the closing, "Time." The Wallflowers' Michael Ward contributes his signature electric guitar-work to four of the album's songs: "Up All Night," "Everywhere I Go," "Somethin' To Believe In," and "Amy's Eyes."
"I've always made records this way?I've always gone all out, even when the budget was only $5,000," explains Mullins, who started the record in Atlanta, finished in L.A. and made side stops in Austin. "I didn't want to limit myself on the production and arrangement side. I can't just make a simple acoustic record. There's always going to be something a little wacky, I might have a Hammond organ and then someone else beating on a water bottle."
The album's personal themes are as varied as its musical textures. For someone who has finally broken through, Mullins' music reflects much of the self-doubt and confusion that comes along with fame and success. And while "Everywhere I Go" may seem on the surface an anthemic, romantic love song, the lyrics reveal something darker: "A good bit of me/Sleeps underneath/In the bed of my soul/Lying next to belief/But if I toss where I lay/I might turn her away/So I try to fall still/Dreaming someday I will/Wake up with you beside me."
"What I'm getting out on this record is that, despite the gratitude about all the good stuff I've experienced, there's still the feeling, 'I can't f**king believe this is happening to me?You gotta be kidding. I don't deserve this?"
The new album represents Mullins' first extended foray into collaboration. On "Amy's Eyes," he adds a chorus to producer Julian Raymond's sardonic verse about his 13-year-old niece, who "listened to Jimi Hendrix and Patsy Cline, likes Johnny Cash, but hates Courtney Love with a passion," and came up with a wide-eyed valentine to his own wife, Kelly Hobbs. Grammy winner Shawn Colvin adds her distinctive backdrop to the Dylanesque honeymoon idyll, "Something To Believe In," while Shelby Lynne contributes a seductive purr to the Frampton "talk box" vocals and sing-song rhythms of the sensuously feline "I Know." Mullins even got the thrill of his life when he recorded "Border Song" with Elton John and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a track recorded for a special future release.
"I think there's more to Shawn Mullins than people may have been aware of," he says. "It was nice to be able to arrange without limitation, but we also paid attention to presenting the songs honestly."
Mullins' literary and cinematic bent shows up on tracks like "Yellow Dog Song," which comes from a story he read in the paper about an old man in a convenience store who "lost his digit in the war" and shoots a would-be robber. And while it may be what his fans have come to expect in the wake of "Lullaby," its dé–šouement--abruptly cutting, montage-like, to the first-person view of the songwriter, gazing out the window of his DeKalb Avenue apartment in Atlanta's "Little Five Points" section--shows Mullins coming of age as an artist.
"I realize most people, especially in America, know me mainly from 'Lullaby,'" says Mullins. "I have to deal with the fact that's what they've heard from me, but I also have to grow and change as an artist and I hope they like what I do."
Beneath the Velvet Sun is a bold and melodic step in the absolute right direction.
Source: http://www.shawn-mullins.com/
