Gather Me

Product Information

It was such an unexpected surprise when I listened back to Brand New Key, Living Bell, Some Say, and I look at the girl I was. Brand New Key had even been banned by some radio stations because its lyrics could be read as something less innocent than the song sounded when Melanie recorded it in the little girl voice she sometimes used. Steppin' has a country feeling with its harmonica and piano and is a somewhat regretful break-up song with a determination to move on. Buddah never did forgive Melanie for this and continued to dog her career by releasing old, in-the-can songs right around the time she'd release new songs on Neighborhood. She enthused at the time that it was her best album yet (which should always be taken with a pinch of salt), and that it was the first album she was entirely happy with, and one that reflected exactly where her head was at, at the time!

The Southern Appalachian folk-hymn What Wondrous Love is given an appropriately simple treatment with mostly Melanie's voice and guitar. As for the tracks, they are fun, light and gentle, but underneath, there are some serious messages she is trying to get across. The latter is considered by many as one of her classics - to me it's a qualified success, because of the ambiguous lyric.However, this is a great album beyond the popular "I've got a brand new pair of roller-skates" song, and the quality of the vinyl was excellent. Steppin'", which also sounds today like a pre-echo of Orton, and incidentally was the first "wronged-woman song" in her catalogue (if you overlook "Wait By the Water" and, indeed, "You Can Go Fishin'"). I have a very well-worn vinyl copy of this album, and I have a feeling I’ll be spinning the digital version just as much.

The album also features the singles “Some Day I’ll Be a Farmer” and the Top 40 hit “Ring the Living Bell”. It opens with Little Bit of Me a sincere explanation of why she can't be constantly touring and recording. The arrangements are mostly quiet and acoustic and even when strings are added they're not overwhelming. The whole album presents a grown up Melanie with a interestingly wide range of material and the same intensity that marked her earlier albums and along with her sincerity was a defining characteristic.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.