Close-Up, Vol. 1: Love Songs

At heart, Suzanne Vega was always a folksinger. Her commercial breakthrough in the ‘80s with “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner” from her second album, Solitude Standing, balanced between her roots and the realities of the marketplace. She enjoyed experimenting on her records and sketched out new territory for singer-songwriters. But it’s always a pleasure to hear her music stripped to its essentials. Here, she re-records her favorite love songs and sings in her beautiful, unforced way while acoustic guitars, a little bass (“If You Were In My Movie”) and some electric instrumentation accents her thoughtful tunes. “Marlene On the Wall” and “Small Blue Thing” were early club favorites and “Gypsy” is an overlooked piece of perfection from Solitude Standing. “Songs In Red and Gray,” “Stockings” and “Bound” prove she hasn’t lost anything over the years. Vega’s an overlooked talent, a master of phrasing and inflection, who manages to add a rhythmic dimension to her music not with excessive percussion but with her voice’s ability to pace a lyric with deliberate precision.