Case Continues [CD-single]

Editorial Reviews
Album Details
Enhanced CD featuring Two Video Clips. The A-side is Written by Neil Hannon and Joby Talbot, the B-side 'little Water Song' is Written by Nick Cave.

Tracks:

The Case Continues
Tango Ballad
Passionate Fight
Little Water Song
Purple Avenue
Streets Of Berlin
Split
Couldn't You Keep That To Yourself
Punishing Kiss
You Were Meant For Me
The Part You Throw Away
Scope J

Amazon.com

Despite her roles in mainstream musicals such as Cats and Chicago, Ute Lemper has never been a typical Broadway baby. Her long association with the works of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, as well as her one-woman shows based on the repertoires of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich, has always marked her as a maverick in a world overpopulated by bland belters and cute ingénues. Lemper's distinctive voice isn't an instrument for easy listening. At full tilt, it's dangerous and edgy. In subdued mode, it's dark, ironic, and despairing. The cruelty that runs through many of her interpretations is taken on the chin. Lemper deals in defiance rather than submission. With just one, edgily updated Weill song ("Tango Ballad") and a host of contributions from Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Philip Glass, and the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, Punishing Kiss is a modern, bleak look at love in the 21st century. At times the tone is murderous, even apocalyptic ("The Case Continues"). The duet "Split," sung with Hannon, is a grimly humorous riot of punches and counterpunches in a disintegrating relationship. There's fleeting, poignant beauty too, in tracks like Waits's "Purple Avenue." Essential listening for anyone who likes their torch songs blood-stained, not just dampened by a few tears. --Piers Ford

Customer Reviews:

A guilty pleasure..........2006-09-30

Is this woman awesome, or what?
I have to say, this is probably one of my fav's. A very deeply moving, emotionally intense project. I keep coming back to it. It's just absolutely awesome!

Oh so very good.......2003-03-06

I fell in love with Ute Lemper when I heard a recording of her singing Kurt Weill's "Bilbao Song." I know she has her detractors, all of whom argue that other people are better at performing Kurt Weill. These people are idiots.

This album came as a shock for me, as she truly stretches out farther than I had expected. Yes, there is a Kurt Weill song here, taken from the Threepenny Opera, but it's rearranged like you've never heard before - with a drum and bass loop churning underneath lush strings and keyboards (but not cheesy keyboards, mind you).

The rest of the album follows in a similar style, though the instrumentation does subtly change for different composers' songs - most notably the addition of a bandoneon for the two Tom Waits songs.

What is amazing about the album is the sense of continuity running through it, in spite its being a collection of songs of different people. The gem of the album, however, is Nick Cave's "Little Water Song," in which, over a beautiful string section, Ute Lemper lets her theatre training and singing mix freely - producing a performance that simply floors me.

What else is there to say? She's simply amazing

The Best CD of All.......2001-07-11

Simply stunning performance of unusual new songs written expressly for her, entirely captivating, imaginatively written and performed. May not appear to be a 'hit' first time round but you will play it again and again, hear more, find new meanings and so much depth.

It is performed dramatically (not as a routine studio tune and lyric) a most stimulating performance. In many ways it is a 'dark' album, not something you will be able to whistle in the bathroom, and all the better for that. If you are looking for real entertainment, look no further.

Ute has to be the most under-rated artist of the current era, wildly flexible in how she performs, in many ways outrageously kitsch. She has performed this album in a tour, which I was privileged to attend and this underlined just how good she - and the album - is. A 'must buy'. Just wish she had a video/DVD as well!

SWEET TORCH SONG TORTURE.......2001-06-03

The statuesque Ute is a beauty so monumental, she's almost architectural. And she's got a voice and delivery to match, plus on this album, a taste for superb material.

My favourites are the Nick Cave, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits songs, but what is really impressive is how her voice holds together the Scott Walker song Scope J (If one can call it a song).

Anyone who can sing along to, let alone intelligently interpret, such a bizarre and dark little symphony, deserves 5 stars just for the effort. I like my divas dark and brooding, like Nico of Velvet Underground, so Ute fits the bill. Investigate and enjoy!

She Is Never What You Expect.......2001-02-01

We all know Ute Lemper as the foremost interpreter of Weill and art songs, but who would have guessed that she is adept at popular tunes too? Well, let me re-phrase, these songs are not "standards", however, they are written by contemporaries that more people would have heard of than Weill. Nick Cave and tom Waits, for example, are two the lyricists whose music is given life on this album. Let's start with the voice: it has a timbre totally unlike any other that you would have come across in pedestrian music circles. It can be warm, it can be cool (with ice-cold precision), it can be smooth or rough. She does whatever she wants to with her voice and the listener sits there with open mouth, awed by the sheer sound of this woman. She doesn't treat her voice as if it is some precious antique, she slams it around and all for the sake of song. Which brings us to her interpretive gifts: they are ample. When I read some of the lyrics in the booklet, I asked myself how she was going to pull it off but she always did and in an approach at odds with whatever you were expecting. Her song selection is most interesting, the only one I was familiar with prior to my purchase was "Streets of Berlin" which I had heard in the movie BENT. In her version, she is very intimate and quiet at first in a way that out-shimmies Mick Jagger (who sang the song in the movie) but then she gets loud and audacious in a way that is totally in keeping with the song's intent and works with instead of against the melody. My only complaint is that occasionally Ms. Lemper lets her voice get the better of her and crosses *that* line into melodrama. Other than this one small quibble, I recommend this disc for listeners who want to be throttled rather than soothed, to think rather than be spoon-fed. Enjoy... I know I did!