Susan James: Highways, Ghosts, Hearts & Home

Susan James: Highways, Ghosts, Hearts & Home
As a review, you have to approach every CD with the same way. You have to give it an earnest listen and research it. That was a little hard with Susan James‘ Highways, Ghosts, Hearts & Home.
It’s not that there is not information on her out there because there is; it is rather than from the getgo the album rubbed me the wrong way. Susan James hails from Topanga Canyon in LA which is fitting because she reminds me of Topanga from classic television show Boy Meets World. She seems like a neo-hippie who is cluelessly oblivious that the last fifty years have happened.
Take the album’s second track, the ridiculous “A Weed Is Not a Weed (When It Grows Where It Belongs).” In it James sings “hey little one with the dreams inside your head/remember mama said when she kneeled beside your bed/that a weed is not a weed when it grows where it belongs.” There are a couple things that I hate about this chorus. First, there is no such word as “kneeled”; if you had previous been kneeling then you knelt, not kneeled. Second, this seems like some lullaby that hippie mom in a floral-print prairie skirt sings to her child as she lays on her potato sack stuffed with goose feathers. It’s campy and it is not just that song, it is the whole CD.
Despite finding out early on that I was going to hate the CD, I still gave the album its due diligence. I decided that Susan James has a great singing voice and is obvious an apt guitarist but her songwriting skills are from a bygone age that I fear is to never return. Her child-like innocence in her songwriting make her seem so naive that I almost wanted to spin the review into something positive but the album truly has very few redeeming qualities.
Rating: 1.3/10
MP3: Susan James “A Weed Is Not a Weed (When It Grows Where It Belongs)”
Buy: iTunes or Amazon