Days In Italy
R  E  V  I  E  W  S

All Music Guide -- FolkWax.com -- Ithaca Times -- Rapid River

Press & Sun -- SacraMusica.org -- Amazon.com -- For Art's Sake

On this eleven-song collection, four songs are new to Annie's musical canon. Two of them were penned by Ithaca-based writers. The Sisters have lived in that upstate New York town for more years than they probably care to remember. Jennie Stearns' "Mystery" appeared on her Mourning Dove Songs album. Annie's gives a wistful, yet emotion filled, interpretation of a lyric that focuses upon life and its many mysteries. Her voice cracks as she delivers the final lines of the chorus, "I can hear a thousand farewells, In these times." Jennie Stearns and her husband Rick were once in, Tin Roof, an Ithaca band that also featured Kathy Ziegler the writer of "Someone Tonight." The lyric equates to a prayer by the narrator to be loved - someday - "All I could ask for, Is someone to hold me tonight." Ziegler, New York-based these day, supplies a back-up vocal on the track. Employing a Tchaikovsky melody, British-born Folk songwriter Bill Caddick wrote the lyric for "John Of Dreams." As Burns states in the liner, she was asked to perform this song of parting at a friend's funeral - "The slave and the freeman, All find their comfort, With old John of dreams."

Annie's song "Days In Italy" is dedicated to the memory of a friend, a museum curator, who passed on after a ten-year struggle with cancer. Melodically upbeat, in her thoroughly unsentimental lyric Annie imagines an into the wild trip to Italy that the pair would have made, ala Thelma and Louise, "if life had been different." Tagged onto the end of the closing cut, "Longtime," there's a hidden track with a foreign language lyric that has the feel of a spiritual, a hymn, even?

Annie Burns is one helluva singer

Don't believe me? Check out her latest solo release, Days in Italy. It's a seamless, immaculate marriage of pop, rock, and country. On these eleven tunes she enlists the aid of a group of celebrated musicians, including guitarist GE Smith of Saturday Night Live fame. I've come to expect nothing less than the sublime from any member of the Burns family, and here Annie delivers with authority, singing with one of the strongest voices in contemporary music. And the songs! The title track, an ode to a deceased companion, feels more like celebration than mourning. "God Made Woman" is a playful, blues-based romp, and the chorus of "Longtime," simply put, is flawless. Her lyrics are equally compelling. In "Surrender," she sings, "The wind is calling through the trees/ Calling out to me.../ And I dream of places in my life/ Of love thatís passed me by," illustrating the nostalgic turmoil of broken memories. Burns is a master of her craft, a seductive ecclesiastical troubadour. There's a certain loneliness to her music, like a nomad in search of sustenance. In a time of such chaos, it's comforting to know there are those among us who revel in that which is beautiful. And man, is this beautiful.

Three Stars!

As principal vocal force behind the highly revered alternative-country council The Burns Sisters, Annie Burns has frequently been recognized for her seamless melodies and transcendent vocals. On these eleven tunes, anchored by a group of celebrated musicians that includes guitarist GE Smith and members of Bob Dylan's touring band, Burns executes a disc of authority, passion, and celebration. The title track marks the passing of a loved one not with mourning but rather heartfelt gratitude for those gifts given unto us while "John of Dream" set to the strains of Tchaikovsky, merges succinct longing with empathic tenderness. However the stand out track is "God Made Woman," an ecstatic, blues-based frolic that strikes at the very nerve of male/female entanglement. Days In Italy would benefit from a bit more punch, and while the limited nature of the lyrics sometimes fails her, Burns delivers them with such verve and honesty that the occassional misfiring in no way detracts from this efforts' abundant strengths.

A Burns sister goes solo
with a labor of love

BY HEATHER HARE
Press & Sun-Bulletin 

Annie Burns performs versatile music. It's the kind of music that is wonderful for dancing around the house, the kind that's great for singing at full volume in the car, the kind that's perfect for lounging on the couch. 

Burns is one-third of the Burns Sisters, a Southern Tier folky kind of band made up of three daughters of former Binghamton Mayor John Burns. Their sound is at once soothing and uplifting. 

Annie Burns' solo album, Days in Italy, released last month, is no different. It's a collection of her favorite songs from the past 10 years. It took a year and a half to put the CD together. 

"It's a labor of love," Burns said. 

Her voice and style sound like a combination of Sarah McLachlan and Loreena McKennitt. Even though her songs are catchy like pop tunes, they avoid the cliche of pop. 

The title track is a song Burns wrote about her best friend. She sings about her friend by the sea on a hot summer day in Italy, even though her friend died before they could take that trip together. She imagines her friend smiling and raising a glass of wine, saying, "Hey, these Italian boys know a woman in her prime." It may sound morose, but it's actually an upbeat song that celebrates a friendship. 

"She was high energy, and she was not wasting a day," Burns said. 

Owl, the first song on the album, was inspired in part by a children's book about a dying young man, in part by a recurring dream and in part by Burns' need to let go of anger in her relationships. 

In her clear and passionate voice, Burns sings: "I heard the owl call my name/Through the wind again/Let it go, Let it in/Can you let me in?" 

Burns wanted to show all sides of her music on the album, so she included God Made Woman, a raw blues song she cowrote with Annie Tate. 

"I have so much serious on there. I have to get something fun on here," Burns said. 

Burns said several people helped her put together the album. One song she loves was one written by her sister Sheila Burns, who used to perform with her sisters. Several of the album's songs, such as Follow and Without Love, were co-written by Annie Burns and Rich DePaolo. 

Clifford Fagin was the executive producer of the album. Burns said he helped recruit musicians for the album, including former members of Bob Dylan's band and the Saturday Night Live band. 

The Religion of Living
Annie Burns - Days In Italy

We live in a time of widespread spiritual awakening. Or so it seems when we look at how widely accepted such things as meditation, and retreats have become. Just look at the breadth of best-selling books, magazines, articles and videos that address - from multiple viewpoints - the subject of the soul. 

In her superb new CD - Days In Italy - Annie Burns brings the search for the essence to a whole new level. The beauty and power of this album are in how subtly and fully integrated into the melodies and lyrics Annie’s life discoveries are. Song after song yields a new insight into the depth of things. But she does this with simplicity and, without the slightest pretension, as though wisdom were the natural byproduct of living. 

On one level this is the kind of CD you will play often for the sheer fun of it. You’ll have it in your car for months because it is rich with the kinds of rhythms, moods, and sound-scapes that you love to drive to. But it is so superbly produced, and the musicians are of such a caliber that you will want to put it on your home stereo and crank it up for the heady/hearty pleasure of such beautifully complex yet completely accessible music. In wonderfully original ways Annie reshapes familiar musical idioms from folk, to classical, to rock, creating an Americana that is new, surprising, and satisfying This is popular music at its very best. 

But that’s just the surface. Listen closely and you will find her newly uncovered ancient echoes of the heart and the soul. Taken together the songs chart a journey across the realities of life and death toward truth and transformation. In lyrics and melodies that haunt long after they have been heard, Annie gives us perspectives on living and loving that are joyfully natural in their wisdom, and deeply wise in their naturalness. There is no cute peek-a-boo behind the screen of poetic images. The songs, their ideas, and their impact are marvelously present and clear. 

The more you listen, the more you understand that her power as an artist lies in her embrace of contradictions. (In a sense, this is the core of the music here - that life is full of contradictions, and that the highest human experiences involve embracing them.) Take, for example, the title track - "Days in Italy" - an almost exuberant anthem to the liberation found in intimate friendships between women. Yet the song is about the death of a best friend. One marvels at how such an evidently happy tune can be so poignant, subtly laced with an unmistakable sorrow. Yet the coda says again and again "la vita è bella" - life is beautiful. The result is the wonderful surprise of a song that makes you feel deeply, below the level of sentimentality. 

Or the wonderful retreat induced "Surrender". The song is about discovering in the visible, audible, palpable world pathways to self-realization. ("Life will give unto me all I need.") The seeker’s response is to surrender to the mystery of it it all, and in that surrender to awaken to a higher state. Yet the production of this piece is almost martial - the drums and blazing guitar rouse and call you to action. The message? Spiritual surrender is a powerful act of courage. 

Annie Burns would probably dismiss the suggestion that she is a sort of high-priestess of the Religion of Living. She would probably say that she is just a good singer-songwriter with lots of road behind and ahead of her. And she is that. She and her equally gifted sisters, nationally know as The Burns Sisters, have probably played all the folk and country venues around the US and Canada. (And last summer she toured Ireland on her own.) In Days in Italy we are gifted with the product of those years of experience; and not just by her highly skilled musicianship, but by the insight and wisdom that come from living with open eyes, and a brave heart.

- Puran Perez
copyright © 2002 Puran Perez

After attending a concert this past Spring at the Mosaic Room Coffeehouse in Avon, MA, I purchased Annie's new CD "Days in Italy" at the table where they were selling the CD's. I already had all of the Burns' releases as a trio, and each of their individual releases, and loved all of them.

On the long ride home, I popped the CD into my car's player and listened to the entire CD. Before I knew it I was home. The entire CD is a departure from any of the other Burns' releases that I have. Annie wrote most of the songs, and they are an aethereally woven tapesty of gentle, yet powerful songs that transported me into a very happy musical plain.

"Days in Italy", the title tune, is dedicated to a close friend of Annie's that passed away, and as the song merrily travels through its tune, I can close my eyes and see the two of them traversing the beaches in Italy. It is a beautiful dedication to a friend, indeed.

Of the 11 songs on the CD, particularly beautiful are "The Owl", "Surrender", "Mystery", "Follow", and "John of Dreams." "Longtime" is a lovesong that touched my heart. Annie's already clear and sweet voice is complimented by the joining of her sisters Marie and Jeannie throughout the CD, and some haunting and unusual instrumentation and vocals effects, as well.

On Sundays, the church bells in the city where I live the ring out loudly and richly. One can hear them from a distance as their echoes trail off and then end. For me, this CD is full of songs that echo like those bells on a gentle breeze, but they are so haunting with their exquisite lyrics and melodies, that I keep hearing them over and over in my head even when they are not being played.

"Days in Italy" is a CD that should have its place in every folk afficionado's music library. If I could give it more than five stars, I would!

I have listened to this music so many times now! We took the cd with us to california and drove up the coast and back down listening over and over to "I Heard the Owl Call My Name," "The Mystery" and of course the title track, dedicated to a dying friend with whom the singer wanted to visit Italy, a visit that never happened but that becomes happily ignited in the chant "La vita e bella." The splendid backing instrumentals and vocals and a delightful voice that ranges somewhere between Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt with passion and verve make this music a delight.