Close-Up, Vol 3 - States of Being

Decades after her first pop success, Suzanne Vega continues to revisit her back catalog, giving her songs the sympathetic interpretations that age allows. Stripped down (as her initial folkie impulses surely wished), the songs are finally intimate and simple, pointing up their lyrical wisdom and letting the melodies flow without lofty intrusion. She never sounded completely comfortable with the more artful productions, and now tunes such as “Undertow” (here, like many others, with modest strings), “My Favorite Plum,” and “Solitude Standing” are within her firm control. “Instant of the Hour After” is the album’s sole new original. A collaboration with Duncan Sheik from a theater piece based on Carson McCullers’s writings, it evokes the nighttime solitude of her best work with an undercurrent of speakeasy tension underscoring the lyric. “Blood Makes Noise” and “Solitaire” are the most animatedly arranged, with distorted guitars driving the desolate rhythm tracks. “Last Year’s Troubles” stands as the most upbeat tune here. There isn’t a false note sung throughout.