Kristin Chenoweth “Coming Home” Album Review

Prime Cuts: Fathers and Daughters, Upon This Rock, I Was Here

No two albums of Kristin Chenoweth are alike.  Though she has been matriculating within the school of Broadway, musicals and TV circuits in her earlier years, when she was offered a recording contract, she puts her creativity on first gear.  Her debut album for Sony Classic is as about as cliché as you would have expected from Chenoweth.  "Let Yourself Go" finds her tackling the musical scores of musicals, show tunes and standards, it's as bread and butter as you can get.  Then for album number two "As I Am," she veers off to her wonder years in singing an album filled with hymns, Christian songs and inspiration odes.  Taking yet another detour, she drops her Christmas album "A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas" in 2008.  Pulling out another unexpected card out three years down the road is "Some Lessons Learned."  Mixing four songs from pop tunesmith Diane Warren (Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Beyonce) with a song written by Dolly Parton "Some Lessons Learned" is her foray into pop-country, the Faith Hill-esque way.  Now, upping her ante in surprising her fans, she greets us with her first live recording "Coming Home."

The titular "Coming Home" is most telling.  This album is an edited version of a couple of concerts which she delivered at her hometown of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  But just as there's no modus operandi at work in all of her releases, this isn't your average live disc.  Instead of recycling her album cuts from her preceding releases live, only a small selection of songs are from her albums.  Rather, Chenoweth has chosen to sing the songs that have been formative to her career, life and growing up.  Interjecting stories in between songs that illuminate the rhetoric of the song choices, this album is more than just a live event captured on disc.  Rather, it's an arc of a biopic about the growing up years of Chenoweth's life that will certainly read with interest for the fans.  And one that will strike an emotional chord with those in the audience who have had seen Chenoweth growing up.   

Poignant moments in her life have been graciously acknowledged, including a touching tribute for her dad "Fathers and Daughters."  Quipped with lots of heartwarming lines, "Fathers and Daughters" is one of the songs that will bring mist to our eyes especially when Chenoweth sings, "When I was a pink ballerina dancing in the kitchen/You held out your hand so I could try my luck at spinning/The world kept turning always thru it all/I knew you would catch me/When I start to fall/That's fathers and daughters." Reminiscing back to the days when she sang at her local church, the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, she delivers the spiritual "Upon this Rock" with lots of sky reaching notes.  Then she comes down to earth with a gritty take of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More."

In introducing Les Miserables' "Bring Him Home," she jokes: "It's my favorite song from that show, and it's the male lead song. That's why I'm in therapy."  Being a big fan of Dolly Parton, Chenoweth has once recorded Parton's "Changed."  Now, she resurrects Parton's bluegrassy "Little Sparrows," which seems to stick out like a sore thumb.  Though her delivery of Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer's "No More Tears" may be feral but it's again a little out of place.  The inspirational country-tinged ballad "I Was There," which speaks about leaving our mark, is an apt way of concluding the album.  And in hindsight, "Coming Home" with its impeccable production and Chenoweth's gorgeous soprano certainly leaves its mark.  

 

 

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