Andreas Vollenweider, Vox

Tracks & Durations

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Review

Vox isn't just the kind of metaphorical title we've come to expect from Andreas Vollenweider. On it, the Swiss harpist actually sings songs in English for the first time. He has a pleasant, slightly coarse alto that would be great at a campfire singalong, but on a highly produced CD, his flaws and limited range become cloying. You could imagine these tunes being sung by Kenny Loggins, but I'm not sure that easy-listening is what Vollenweider had in mind. And Daniel Kueffer's sub-Kenny G. sax playing doesn't help. But despite the songs, which take up nearly half the disc, Vox doesn't sound that distant from Vollenweider's previous discs. He's still a brilliant multi-instrumentalist and adventurous composer, ingenious in his mixing of global music, creating tableaus that embrace South African singers, Indian bansuri flute players, Chinese erhu masters, and even his daughter's school choir. "Wake Up and Dance" has a rhythm constructed around crowd chants from London's One Million People peace march in February, 2003. It builds into a swirling mosaic with sirens wailing and an African chorus singing a tribal chant with solo voices, a youth choir, and more emerging out of a chaotic bazaar. The chamber setting of his song "Paper Walls" is wrought like an antique book cover, full of detail.

But as often as Vollenweider succeeds, he sabotages his compositions with episodic arrangements and a corny sense of humor. On "Enchanted Rocks" he mixes Zulu-language Andrews Sisters-style vamping while launching into a Louis Armstrong scat imitation. It's meant as a joke, but is just wrong. In recent years, Andreas Vollenweider hasn't been given the credit he deserves, and albums like Vox may be part of the reason why. --John Diliberto

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