Singer In The Storm: The Life and Music Of...

AMG Review of Singer In The Storm: The Life and Music Of...

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Not to be confused with Near's 1990 live album Singer in the Storm, this is a two-cassette, two-hour, spoken-word recording. Near calls it an "audio autobiography." Following an effusive introduction by an unnamed announcer, Near describes her life, career, and politics in segments bookended with excerpts from her songs. She sometimes sounds like she's reading, as she sometimes is, from her 1990 written autobiography, Fire in the Rain...Singer in the Storm. The tape is not unlike a long version of the kind of promotional programs record companies sometimes send out to radio stations or an informal version of an audiobook. Coming out so soon after the publication of Near's book and while she was touring the country in her autobiographical play, Fire in the Rain, it was yet another extended self-assessment from an artist only in her early forties, and enough to make you begin to wonder why such a usually forward-looking performer seemed to be have become so inward-looking.