Review Summary: The Metal Queen becomes the Raggedy Jane
The transition to the 90s was infamously rough for many 80s metal artists. But instead of talking about all these hair metal bands embarrassing themselves with misguided grunge albums, I’m going to review an actually good example of an 80s artist going 90s.
Why is “Emotional Rain” so good? Well, because it has some very good songs, but also because Lee Aaron adapts pretty well to the 90s alt rock sound. Her raspy and nasal voice is already a good fit for the genre, and it helps that her voice has matured since “Some Girls Do”. She’s also pretty convincing at singing quirky, wordy lyrics about confusing thoughts, difficult relationships, being jaded but with a sensitive heart, or some strange, trippy stuff, over not quite grungy riffs. The single “Baby Go Round” is a great example of that, with catchy melody and mysterious but memorable lyrics such as “she could be young and foolish, she could be old and wise”, and “ Baby go round, pick up the pieces when it all falls down”.
But the album’s sound is already established very well with the first song, “Odds of Love”, with its distorted but catchy riff. Or on the even catchier and more distorted “Inside”, the crazy fast and distorted “Judgment Day”, another pretty fun song about putting “the soul into motion”, the heavy and dark “Concrete and Ice”. For softer songs, there is the bluesy “Fire in Your Flame”, which is mostly a sweet love ballad but starts with a strange, heavy and distorted intro. Or the pop ballad “Raggedy Jane”, about the strange title character, who has been through so much and yet we can’t forget her. This is a common theme of the album: how the narrator or the subject of the song endures and keeps trying to find her place.
However, the most fascinating song would be “Waterfall”, with its dreamy, trippy atmosphere, strange singing and even stranger lyrics about how “you carry me down to the waterfalls”. It’s the kind of weird alt rock song that you don’t really understand but it keeps haunting you. This is why this album works so well: it manages to craft catchy, fun songs with Lee’s trademark energy and emotional intensity, while adding lots of angst and distortions, with strange lyrics that stick in your mind and describe some unforgettable characters with tons of personality. It’s the perfect kind of alternative rock, kind of quirky and hard to explain but still manages to appeal to your imagination and feel some emotion, and doesn’t forget to sound good.
Well, most of it is good. After a while, the songs can feel a little repetitive, using the same melody too many times. Some of the songs aren’t as good, like “Heaven”, which sounds more like a bland 80s ballad, or “Cry”, whose lyrics feel like they have been borrowed from other songs, like “Cry me a river”, or “Everybody Hurts”. That’s part of a larger issue: there are many albums from the 90s that sound like this one, so Lee sets herself up for comparisons to all the greatest alt rock albums, and unfortunately, I’m not sure she wins that competition. But “Emotional Rain” has enough personality and talent to be one of the good alt rock albums, if not one of the greatest. Mostly, it’s Lee Aaron trying the alt rock sound, having fun and doing a lot of good things with it. This album, along with the self-titled one and “Some Girls Do”, is one of her best attempts at different styles. She has proved herself to be some kind of queen of reinvention, an artist who can credibly perform in different genres. What about her other musical experiments? Well, that’s something for another day.
