Robert Fripp<\/strong>. During one of Fripp’s many hiatuses from King Crimson, he sought to work as an \u201cintelligent mobile unit\u201d (or some similar Frippism). He made a point of working with many artists outside the whole progressive rock milieu, and the Roches’ self-titled debut album was one of these. As the three sisters showed off a dazzling display of their vocal work, incisive lyrics and fine folk-style playing, Fripp’s thickly sustained electric guitar wove in and out of the mix. It was a strange pairing, but it worked.<\/p>\nAfter picking up that 1979 album, I was hooked. Even though subsequent albums didn’t feature Fripp, the sheer quality of The Roches’ songs \u2013 and their quirky delivery \u2013 endeared them to me. (That my toddling daughter used to dance around the living room to their album Another World<\/em> helps a bit, too.) I got the chance to see them onstage a couple of times, and had the dubious honor of receiving a sort of cease-and-desist email from Suzzy Roche when she learned I was planning to write a piece for my \u201cBootleg Bin\u201d column covering an unreleased live recording of the group. (Apparently they share Fripp’s famous disdain of fan recordings.)<\/p>\nOne of the records I picked up back in the 80s was a pre-Roches album credited to Maggie and Terre Roche<\/strong> (Suzzy, as Roches fans will doubtless know, was away in Hammond, Louisiana during the period this album was cut). Every bit as good as the subsequent Roches albums with Suzzy, 1975’s Seductive Reasoning<\/em> applied a slightly more commercial sheen to the sisters’ music. Though clearly a Maggie\/Terre project, the album features the unmistakeable sonic imprints of the other parties involved. Namely, producer (of some but not all tracks) Paul Simon<\/strong>, and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section<\/strong>. Both make their presence felt in a sympathetic, not-overpowering manner.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/roches_seductive_reasoning_col.jpg\")
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The songs \u2013 like nearly all of the sisters’ subsequent work \u2013 deftly mix humor, pathos, tragedy, playfulness, and sexiness into a pleasing stew. Highlights abound, but the Carole King<\/strong>-ish \u201cUnderneath the Moon\u201d is certainly near the top. The chugging \u201cIf You Empty Out All Your Pockets You Could Not Make The Change\u201d is a hoot, and \u201cTelephone Bill,\u201d with Terre’s clear-as-a-bell upper register, is heartbreakingly stark. But for me Seductive Reasoning<\/em>‘s finest moments are on \u201cThe Mountain People,\u201d an autobiographical country-and-western pastiche that shows the sisters’ unerring, note-perfect feel for American musical forms. Bonus points for some very clever rhyming.<\/p>\nA 2012 Real Gone Music reissue of the Columbia album doesn’t add any bonus tracks, but it does include a contemporary essay from Maggie. It also features what they’re calling the \u201coriginal\u201d cover artwork. (I like the Columbia one a whole lot more.) While I’m a fan of all Roches work (at least up through 1992’s A Dove<\/em>, after which things get spotty), thanks to its perfect balance of quirk and commercial sensibility, Seductive Reasoning<\/em> has aged the best. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since my discovery of their music, The Roches have long been a sentimental favorite for me. Having grown up on a steady diet of pop and rock, I didn’t take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,51,64,65],"tags":[1854,1862],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-folk","category-pop","category-reissue","category-review","tag-robert-fripp","tag-roches","cat-30-id","cat-51-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19832,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions\/19832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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