Lifelines

Eschewing the eclectic dance pop that drove her 2007 debut solo album Ten Feet High, Andrea Corr (lead vocalist for popular Irish family band the Corrs) decided to pay homage to the artists who inspire her by putting together a collection of covers. Unpredictable, yet reliably steeped in the radio-ready, adult alternative patina that fueled her work with the Corrs and elsewhere, Lifelines opens with a smoky rendition of the 1938 Irvin Kahal/Sammy Fain-penned torch song "I'll Be Seeing You," followed by a sweet yet slick rendering of the Velvet Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes." Elsewhere, a spirited telling of John Lennon's "No 9 Dream" pits Corr's angelic voice against an ELO-inspired foundation that dips in and out of psychedelic melancholia with studied studio grace, Nick Drake's "From the Morning" bounces around a marimba-infused, pizzicato backbeat that elevates the plaintive folk song to a full-on worldbeat jam, while Jon Anderson and Vangelis' "State of Independence" finds Corr adopting Anderson's spritely phrasing with appropriate impishness. Lifelines closes with a lovely, piano-led rendition of underground, manic depressive Texan Daniel Johnston's beautiful "Some Things Last a Long Time," lending the whole outing an air of hopeful yet fragile, bittersweet defiance. ~ James Christopher