Track Listing

1. Telling Stories
2. Less Than Strangers
3. Speak The Word
4. It's OK
5. Wedding Song
6. Unsung Psalm
7. Nothing Yet
8. Paper And Ink
9. Devotion
10. Only One
11. First Try

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9329 in Music
• Released on: 2000-02-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Telling Stories is Chapman's first album in over four years. With this collection she has gone back to the spare, unsentimental feel of her early work, recapturing some of the urgency and simple melody lines that made her 1988 self-titled debut such a classic. There's maturity here, and strong sense of spiritual metaphor. On "Unsung Psalm", for instance, she imagines her funeral, singing: "I'd have a halo and flowing white robes / If I live right", while "Wedding Song" has the devotional line: "I reach out for your hand / For you I'd don a veil". The musical arrangements, too, are pared-down, with ghostly bluegrass banjo, silvery fiddle and guitar woven into subtle drum loops. Though not as immediate as her debut, it's Chapman's most focused work in a long time. --Lucy O'Brien

CD Description
There's nothing particularly fancy about Tracy Chapman's particular brand of folk-rock; she just blends the folk into the rock more appealingly than most anyone out there. Her music has enough verve to have vaulted her out of obscurity twice. Her fifth jaunt, TELLING STORIES, continues her charmingconsistency with an alluring set of picture-perfect tunes.
The bouncy title track opens the album with a clever circular play on a deceptively simple line, "there's a fiction in the space between.".., which makes it clear from the startthat Tracy remembers the value of a good pop song. Good popsongs abound on TELLING STORIES, from the country-rock of "Less Than Strangers" to the singer-songwriter folk of "Unsung Psalm" to the upbeat dance of "It's OK". Between her acclaimed debut and TELLING STORIES, very little about Chapman has changed, which is both comforting and good, the world needs good, well-meaning folk-pop songwriters and good, well-meaning folk-pop songs.

Customer Reviews

Tracy Chapman meets drum loops in the 21st Century
Remember all of those acoustic tracks from her debut album, the near perfect production, clean and detailed recordings of heart felt songs....

Well Tracy has returned, after quite some time away, and she's still overflowing with the meaning of life experience, still producing music that demands to be listened to, but she's discovered some digital technology along the way.

No problem with that, the sample loops blend effortlessly into the soulful lyrics and spacious mixes.

The CD has been mastered as an HDCD, and it shows.

Buy this album if you love the Tracy Chapman of the 20th Century, or you love quality singer songwriters, or you just love beautifully produced CDs that make your hi-fi sound gorgeous.

Introspection, pathos and insight, ..."Brilliant!"
This is such an accomplished album on so many different levels, that it really should be bought by all music lovers. She writes the most poignant songs that are so acute to feelings innate to us all. The album has a very distinct chronolgy to it, that I would imagine, mirrors events in her life. "Telling Stories" the title track recounts a relationship where she was fictitiosly made out to be the 'one at fault' all the time. "Unsung Psalms" - truly one of the most beautiful songs you'll ever hear, is concerned with the ideas of redemption and salvation. She questions her life, the afterlife, and whether at her funeral, she would have had a fulfilled and generally 'proper' existence. My favourite song besides the two I've mentioned is "The Only One" which is Tracy's dirge for her mother who died last year. IT regards her losing centre, and finding that living without her mother is an experience that she is finding difficult to get used to. She almost reverts back into a child to reflect this point. "Does heaven have enough angels yet?" she continues to say. The line " sometimes I hear her calling straight from the house of God!" just sums up Tracy Chapman's considerable talents. She has a fantastic voice, full of emotion, and is able to relate complex feelings in a simple form, the mark of a true genius. I can not emphatically recommend this album enough!!

This album exhibits Tracy Chapman at her very best.
When I heard that Tracy Chapman had a new album out, I simply had to rush and buy it. I bought the album after only hearing the first single "Telling Stories" once. I enjoy every track on the album. "Unsung Psalm" tells a haunting tale of a person looking back on their life after they have died. Tracy proclaims "There would be psalms sung by a choir/If I'd lived right." I have always thought that Chapman is an underrated love song writer. "Devotion" from this album is a simple, yet very poignant song expressing the truth of love. It follows in the mode of "Baby Can I Hold You" and "For You" from her 1988 self-titled debut album. Tracy evokes a sense that we have no control over whom we love and the emotion in this song makes the listener feel as if she has felt these emotions before. "Less Than Strangers" speaks of the reality of a broken heart. Tracy sings "You and me had some history/Had a semblance of honesty/ All that has changed now/ We shared words only lovers speak/How can it be?/ We are less than strangers" Perhaps the most beautiful song on the album besides "Unsung Psalm" is "The Only One." This song features (hold onto your hats)the great Emmylou Harris shadowing Tracy on the chorus. The song simply evokes emotions in me that I never knew existed. "Paper and Ink" is a great song to listen to just to appreciate Tracy's talent with the acoustic guitar. I wholeheartedly recommend this album for all true Tracy Chapman fans. All true Chapman fans know the talent that exudes from this woman.