Today's Boom Tune
Song: "Talk to Me of Mendocino"
Album: Kate & Anna McGarrigle
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Very few songs evoke a place quite like the McGarrigle sisters’ “Talk to Me of Mendocino.” There the pair are, content to be sitting and freezing in upstate New York state, looking at all the beaituful tall trees and wondering if they’re going to have to remain alone or will be beckoned to the West Coast. Of course, there’s the case of a severe broken heart and a bad case of the blues supplying the drama behind this possible move west, but for now they can’t quite figure out the next step. But if it’s off from home and on to Southbend, Indiana, no doubt to ogle a few automotive companies, not to mention Monty Python’s Spamalot, so be it. And then it’s over the Rocky Mountains before sliding right down to the high cliffs of Northern California. Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s voices are living beauty, like they’re caught perfectly between pieces of parchment paper without a chance of losing the gorgeous tone coming from another world. There is something about sisters who sing together that’s thicker than blood, and as this pair came to the front in the mid-70s, they seemed to stop time. It didn’t take but a few years for the changing musical landscape of new wave to break over such fragile arrangements, but for a brief moment it really did feel like the McGarrigles had lifted up the world and maybe even planted a rainbow off the coast from the towering redwood tress. Mendocino has been magical ever since. 1 Comments
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