She Talks to Rainbows Reviews

The Ronettes were a girl group that always flirted with being too much, and their sound was frequently more aggressive and dangerous than many of their counterparts and contemporaries. It was all in the way that Ronnie Spector sang. Her voice was filled with carnal knowledge, a playful adolescence, and an exquisite tension between being tough and tender. Flash forward from 1964 to 1999, she’s lost the backup singers, the Wall of Sound, but she’s picked up punk cred, rock iconography, and sounds right at home with an alternative rock edge to the pop sound.

Her voice always had a switchblade edge, and co-producers Joey Ramone (a long-time devote to the Ronettes) and Daniel Rey give her plenty of noise to surround that iconic vibrato. It comes out swinging strong with the title track, a cover of a Ramones song off ¡Adios Amigos! Ronnie Spector’s voice emerges through a dream-like haze of sonic noise and gives us that “oh-oh-oh” that will always sounds like what it feels like to fall in love to me. It’s a stellar opening to her strongest set of solo material.

There’s another Ramones cover later, “Bye Bye Baby.” “Bye Bye Baby” is a duet with Joey, and it feels like a sequel to “Be My Baby” in which the hitherto unheard object of Ronnie’s desire has a back-and-forth with her about the fate of that promised relationship. And for good measure, a live version of one of the final Ronettes recordings, “I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine.” She belts and reveals the soft side of the original bad girl of rock in this recording, and it’s just as good as the original.

Things get better when we finally hear what “Don’t Worry Baby” sounds like under her guiding hand, and it’s pop music nirvana. She Talks to Rainbows version will never rival what might have been if Phil Spector got to produce “Don’t Worry Baby” in the same illustrious manner as “Baby, I Love You” or “I Wonder,” but goddamn does it still reach stratospheric heights. Chalk that up not only to power of Brian Wilson’s own musical genius, but Ronnie’s way with a lyric that is both innocently romantic but bubbling under with erotic promise and potential waiting to get out.

Yet it’s the most somber moment of the EP that comes out the best. For all of her incredible vocal work in rave-ups (“Do I Love You?”) and flirtations (“(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up”), Ronnie Spector knows how to sell you on a heartbreaking ballad. Think of how wistful and downright pleading she sounds on “Walking in the Rain.” Now listen to her version of “You Can’t Put Yours Arms Around a Memory.” She approaches that song with the knowledge of someone who has been knocked down, battle scarred, and still somehow managed to claw their way back up. In a career filled with undeniably great and iconic vocal performances, “You Can’t Put Yours Arms Around a Memory” belongs in the conversation for one of her greatest achievements.

She Talks to Rainbows is the finest hour (actually, about twenty minutes but you know what I mean) of Ronnie Spector’s solo career. Her voice still retains its allure and punch, and Joey Ramone was right when he said she sounds “now.” Her voice is singular and unique, and this EP highlights why she’s one of our living legends.  

DOWNLOAD: “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory”