Local CD Reviews: Tim Terry, Autumn Fox

Born II Live

The Tim Terry Experience

Self-released

Since returning home to Memphis in 2005, musician Tim Terry has endeavored to make the city’s scene a little more embracing of music that falls outside — and in between — long entrenched and separate musical camps. His efforts have paid off most notably in the founding of the Basement Lounge, a series of concerts held mostly at the South Main venue the Rumba Room, that has become a haven for the neglected neo-soul and contemporary R&B artists in town.

Now Terry has released his sophomore CD Born II Live, an eclectic effort that also emphasizes tunefulness over categorization. Terry announces his intention to shake things up with the disc’s opening title track, which combines smooth soul harmonies and grinding hard rock guitar in a way that is reminiscent of Michael Jackson but heavier. On the follow-up “Busy Doing Nothing,” he gets Prince funky with the help of a horn section and a quote from Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.” Later still, he taps a lighter vein of rock with “Over U,” which would make a great track for John Mayer.

And he rounds out the collections nine tracks with an out-of-nowhere dance track, “Spread Love.” Most of what comes in-between is standard slow jam R&B, some good (the Latin-grooved “Ooowee”), some tiresome (the piano meander “Your Love Is Everything”), but always well executed and refreshingly different.

Autumn Fox

Autumn Fox

Visible Media Group

Autumn Fox

Originally from Idaho, singer-songwriter Autumn Fox took a meandering route to Memphis, stopping in Oregon, Philadelphia, and Atlanta before settling in Memphis to attend the Visible School Music and Worship Arts College. An early standout, in 2007 she won an open mic competition at Atlanta’s Eddie’s Attic, a contest where previous winners had included John Mayer. A year later she went into Ardent Studios to begin work on her first album. Two years later that record is finally out.

As her affiliation with Visible School — and, to a lesser extent, Ardent — might suggest, Fox is a self-identified Christian artist, but you wouldn’t really know it from her songs, which are mostly anonymous declarations of ardor that could apply equally to a lover as a savior. The same sense of non-specificity extends to her music, however. This 14-song collection is a grab bag of styles and directions, none developed to a satisfying conclusion. Perhaps because of the long incubation, Autumn Fox feels less like an artistic statement that a journal of Fox’s musical growth.

The majority of the songs are like “I See You In the Light” and “You Get Me” — pretty, meditative modern folk that don’t stand up to much scrutiny. The ’60s girl-group inspired “My Favorite” is an aberration, not exactly fresh but a rare upbeat number that comes way too early. There is even an Eddie’s Attic live track thrown in there.

Particularly noteworthy are a couple of “experimental” tracks — “Sapphire Blue” and “Sedated” — which find Fox’s lovely expressive voice backed solely by drummer/husband Chris Hunt. They represent one of the more interesting avenues that could have borne more thorough exploration.

© 2010 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.