“Worldly” may be an offbeat word to apply to a singer-songwriter, but it seems just right when applied to Brandi Shearer.

There’s an experienced, wised-up quality to the San Francisco-based musician’s music, in both its writing and delivery, and that’s what lends a special quality to her Amoeba Records album Close to Dark. She may sing, “I wanna go to Heaven like other little girls,” in her song “Heaven,” but there’s nothing little-girlish about her. Unlike many another of her female contemporaries, she seems full-grown and knowing.

Much of the compelling mood on Close to Dark is a product of its rueful self-penned material; many of Shearer’s songs look back on scuttled relationships with a sharp yet never clinical eye. One of her best is “Congratulations,” in which a couple of former lovers, who have evidently met up in a chance encounter, maybe on the street, exchange pleasantries and haltingly try to catch up; we hear the woman’s half of the chat. It’s only near the song’s conclusion, when Shearer sings, “Well, I’m seeing somebody, but it’s just casual,” that one understands what the conversation is really about. The tune’s simple, understated subtlety is worthy of a finely crafted short story.

 Equally fine and alert, but more direct, is the swaggering “You’re Mine,” which begins with typical restraint and rises to a burning climax. “It’s plain that you’re not good for me/You’re a liar, a cheat, but you’re mine,” Shearer sings, with the pained roar of the hopelessly ensnared. At other times, even when she recognizes her own culpability in the situation, she’s won’t put up with an errant lover’s deceit, as in “I’ve Had Enough”:

No need, no need, no need for games, dear, I’ve played them all before
Though I never win, dear, I’ve learned how to keep score
There’s the door
I want you out.

There’s a great deal of fierce emotion in Brandi Shearer’s songs, but she never succumbs to the temptation to over-sing them. Holding back is the heart of her delivery. She has a lush, throaty voice that she can open at full throttle, but she lets her material gain power slowly over the course of a suddenly explosive interpretation. (In mid-song onstage, as a performance rises, she’ll stamp her foot, like a mare wanting out of the stall.) She shares this talent to coax a song, rather than beat it, with certain jazz and pop talents whose influence you can hear immediately in her sound: Billie Holiday, for one, and Peggy Lee.

Close to Dark benefits from its warm sound and sensitive accompaniment. The collection was co-produced by Shearer and her guitarist Ted Savarese, with an important assist from Larry Klein, celebrated for his work as bassist and producer with his former spouse Joni Mitchell. The recording features such top sidemen as Savarese, guitarist Willie Aron, bassist David Piltch, and drummer Danny Frankel (all current members of Shearer’s working band), plus Jim Campilongo, well-known for his work with Norah Jones.

Some writers have compared Brandi Shearer to multiple Grammy winner Jones, but that strikes me as just laziness. Shearer has her own attack, her own fully-formed style, and her own distinctive lyrical approach. She has an original voice, and that’s a rarity to be sought out in these days when musical cloning is an all-too-common phenomenon. Brandi Shearer reminds me of no one so much as…Brandi Shearer.

--Chris Morris, Los Angeles, October 2007