On some level, the new Maria McKee album is her masterpiece. Called La Vita Nuova, the Fire Records release seems the culmination of so much that the former Lone Justice singer has attempted in the last two or so decades, and the sort of release that strikes out hard for new territory with real gusto. Hooks that are large, riffs that are brash, and lyrics that are poetic, this Maria McKee record is glam rock that has meaning and depth. Fans of 1996's Life is Sweet should find lots of this familiar, even if the tone here is more mature and assured.
"Effigy of Salt" and "Page of Cups" have a feel like portions of 2003's High Dive, but the elegant and supple "Let Me Forget" has a glorious hook. It's one that, like lots of what's here on La Vita Nuova, sounds a bit like maybe Laura Nyro covering Suede, to use a fanciful description. It's a style that suits the epic coming-out ballad "Courage" near the center of the record. It's McKee addressing her queerness, and a composition that's simultaneously raw and elegant. There's no one else who really sounds like this. And even for fans of her voice, a voice that's rocked and roared for more than three decades now, from cow-punk to alt-rock, the tune is a revelation.
So much of La Vita Nuova has that effect on a listener. And one is left grasping for ways to describe this, as if you could put into words the chills this induces, or the tingles on the arms when she pursues her muse over the ridges of the melody of "The Last Boy", a majestic Bobbie Gentry-meets-Bowie number near the end of the album, for example. While on the stately "Right Down to the Heart of London", McKee shifts into the sort of mode Kate Bush used on "Oh England My Lionheart in an attempt to pay tribute to her new literal and spiritual home. The song is so gloriously affecting that long-time fans should find this as tremendously moving as I did. Similarly, "I Never Asked" and "However Worn" touch a nerve that I can't quite place in words. I suppose the thing I could say is to remember the first time you heard "Life on Mars", and recall now how those chords transported you completely.
La Vita Nuova is not as loud as Life is Sweet (1996) but it is, you know what I mean? It's loud with emotions, deafening emotions, sweeping emotions, cathartic revelations that inspire and transfix. While earlier albums have had decades to work on me, this one had the same sort of effect instantly. Intensely personal and blissfully broad in tone, nearly every composition here rings with the kind of heart-on-the-sleeve generosity that McKee used as a performer on earlier records. She can sound like she's spinning near the edge of a cliff, about to throw herself over, and then she pulls things together and roars back into our orbit. La Vita Nuova is an extraordinary album, and the sort of thing I want to play as loudly as possible even as it seems like the world's ending around us.
La Vita Nuova by Maria McKee is out now via Fire Records.
More details on Maria McKee via her official Twitter feed.