Music Review: Marshall Chapman shines with all-covers set

Marshall Chapman, “Songs I Can’t Dwell Without” (Tallgirl Files)

As Marshall Chapman sings the monumental North American songbook on her recent album, the variety of tunes chosen is all over the map, doubtlessly because they got right here from such various locales as New York, Tennessee, Detroit, Oklahoma and Canada.

That’s fragment of the class to “Songs I Can’t Dwell Without,” and Chapman makes all of them her possess. The South Carolina native, who lives in Nashville, covers 9 largely familiar tunes so convincingly it be simple to take a look at her recording an involving field dedicated to any conception to be one of many composers.

Leonard Cohen, as an instance, would be an right prefer. Chapman’s puny twang and considerate phrasing voice out the wit in his “Tower of Tune.”

Her sultry alto is a dazzling match for Bob Seger’s street-warrior legend “Flip the Page,” and he or she crafts “Will You Composed Admire Me The next day” as a reminder we eternally stay children, particularly by romance.

There are furthermore compelling performances of songs identified with Johnny Cash, Chet Baker, J.J. Cale, Bobby Charles and Elvis. The lean preparations at some level of merit from the work of guitarist Will Kimbrough, who masterfully creates appropriate atmospherics.

The finale is the sauntering gospel of “He’s Got the Complete World In His Hands,” with Chapman resurrecting a current from her childhood. She grew as a lot as alter into a dazzling songwriter, however it be her talents as a interpreter that make this album — her 14th — perchance her only.