As we continue our backwards march through this album, we arrive at the fourth cut, the Title Track from 2005′s Return of the Sacred Heart. It is over six and a half minutes of our siren’s sweet voice accompanied by Smillie’s electronic arrangement.
This song and its album garnered rave reviews and esteemed comparisons on the interwebs. Mike Davies of NetRhythms writes “(Emmylou) Harris has been used as a touchstone for reviews, but while the comparisons are justified, I’d offer a couple of other influences too. Leonard Cohen would clearly seem to be in evidence on the magnificent title track…”
Monica lists Harris along with Patsy Cline and Neil Young as her personal influences on her website Bio Page.
We return to her Starbucks live performance to hear this song.
Even on this poor quality video, you can tell she has a real vocal talent. I’m glad that the audience seems to have shut up a little more during this song. Heh.
I really do like the country meets electronica sound that she creates. It could be termed alt-country, except I suppose alt-country doesn’t really sound like this to most people. Jeez.
There I go, categorizing.
… throw in their that this is “Christian Music” and you have real genre bender.