Mindy Smith – Stupid Love

Album Reviews • Tuesday August 4th, 2009 • 9:00 am

Mindy Smith isn’t a country artist. Not really. She’s ingrained in the Nashville music scene, to be sure, but, technically, she comes closer to alt-country, or, if you prefer, Americana. You could even get away with calling her, simply, a folk singer. The thing is, her voice doesn’t have any twang to it. And neither does her music. There’s no sense of dynamics to it, no grit, no depth, no texture. It’s weightless, and it’s vague, which is why it fits under such wishy-washy, ill-defined genre tags.

Her third record is called Stupid Love. It takes a certain self-confidence to put the word “stupid” in your album title, and Stupid Love is not a stupid album. Smith is no dummy either: After working with producer Steve Buckingham on her first two records she shifts here, co-producing with Nashville session players Ian Fitchuk and Justin Louks. Moving from producer to producer like that is a smart move for a young artist like Smith, who hasn’t found her own voice just yet; in theory, it ought to keep her albums sounding varied, and she’ll surely learn a lot about record-making by working with different co-conspirators that way.

Problem: It hasn’t really worked. In fact, she’s gone backwards. Her debut, One Moment More, carried some promise by highlighting Smith’s varied interests in rock and gospel, particularly on the knockout single “Come to Jesus.” Her album, Long Island Shores, was relatively bland, lacking the minor changes in texture that made the debut relatively good, and—more importantly—lacking anything resembling good songs.

I hate to say it, but if even a veteran like Buckingham can’t find any grit or dimension to your songs, it’s because it ain’t there. On Stupid Love, everything just falls flat, flatter than ever before. The songs are of a uniform tempo, the arrangements bland, the production lacking any depth; even when Smith writes a pretty melody, as she does on “Highs and Lows,” it flatlines, because the production is so shallow and static. Fitchuk and Louks try to bring some variety to these songs—like on the mellow flutes that appears on “Highs and Lows,” the electric guitar solo on “What Love Can Do,” the string backdrop and gospel harmonies on “Couldn’t Stand the Rain”—but it all blends together into the same mushy, faceless Nashville sound.

It’s all totally pleasant, and totally forgettable; at thirteen sound-alike tracks, it’s a marathon of cheerful banality. The generic relationship lyrics don’t make any more of an impression, nor does Smith’s completely fine but not-terribly-distinctive voice. Stupid Love may not be a dumb album, but it’s hard to imagine any listener putting much thought into it, either.

Tagged as: Americana, Folk, Nashville

By Josh Hurst

Jon

Have to disagree about Long Island Shores. It did not "lack anything resembling good songs." Yes, it spiraled downward from there, but the 1-2 opening of "Out Loud" and "Little Devil" was quite good.

Jim Moulton

This is a good review, but I can not give much in the way of reviewing until I get my disc from Vanguard, I have been a huge fan of Mindy's, "One Moment More" was awesome, full of great emotion, a lot missing besides Steve Buckingham could be that her old recording engineer Gary Paczosa has moved on to A and R, he was in my little opinion, the best, in acoustic recording. I'm hearing some ok stuff, but it is different in some ways, Mr Hurst has said alot that is true, this is pretty flat stuff, On release day , there was no promotion put into it, I went to check out Barnes and Nobles and could not find it, They did have a few copies in an obscure place. It was not where they put their hot new CDs , like Sara Watkins , well, nothing more til I get my own copy and can hear it on my stereo.

gary burnette

Its a shame that people have such a hard time shedding their preconceptions about Nashville and its "sound"
I assume that if you live here you don't get out often and if you don't you should visit.
Nashville is the most musically diverse"label defying" city on the planet.
The only valid use of the term "nashville sound"would apply to the Jerry/Owen Bradley period when Patsy Cline was alive.
Its equally disconcerting that "singer songwriters" are still evaluated on their abilities to genre jump from gospel to blues to folky all in the same record,all the while showing their"grit"and diary-esque "honesty"

In the 90's,Mitchell Froom,Jon Brion and a handful of other sonic explorers gave
"singer songwriters" a context thru their production that brought artists to a wider audience by creating a musical pallet for their songs.
Sexsmith, Colvin,Vega,Cohn were the sound of the day.

"Stupid Love" is sung over the musical context of 2009,a context that reflects the era...more linear,less dynamic shifts...less pandering to the listener who doesn't
need to be warned musically..."here comes the chorus!"
hip hop kik patterns,quirky synth textures, loops mixed with banjo and acoustic guitar drifting in and around her sweet voice reflect the sound of the world around us.
These are simple heartfelt songs that bear up under the weight of multiple listenings.......no great payoffs..."he died!!!"...no crafty lyric trickery"omg she was talking about her mom" all the while,with every listen, revealing something new,lyrically and sonically to the listener,reflecting his or her own life experience...
or maybe,just helping them enjoy this very moment in 2009.