Review: Sophie B. Hawkins, Tongues and Tails

Sonically intricate and emotionally raw, Sophie B. Hawkins's Tongues and Tails is about as complex as pop music can get.

Sophie B. Hawkins, Tongues & TailsComparisons to Madonna were inevitable: Sophie B. Hawkins was (and is) a sexy, blond pop singer whose balls are bigger than her voice. But just one look past her break-out hit, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” and it’s clear Hawkins is her own creature. The lead single from the singer’s debut, Tongues and Tails, at first seems like your standard pop confection, opening with a simple drum loop and a curious vocal introduction (“That old dog has chained you up all right”), but it then erupts—with the aid of live drums, twelve-string guitar, and Hawkins’s imitable yelp, “I had a dream I was your hero!”—into what can best be described as one of the greatest unrequited love songs of the decade (or any decade).

Surely, it had to be a fluke. The rest of the album couldn’t possibly touch the magnificence, the utter brassiness, the pop perfection of those seven little words: Damn, I wish I was your lover. But it did, and still does. Even though Tongues and Tails failed to produce any other hits, Hawkins’s equally sex-charged “We Are One Body,” a gritty declaration of lusty co-dependency, and, though less obvious, “Don’t Stop Swaying,” a probing ballad in which the singer twists “Hanzel & Gretel” into an unsettling, Flowers in the Attic-style tale of incest, were more than worthy contenders for chart success.

Perhaps audiences weren’t ready for the ambiguous nature of Hawkins’s unbridled sexuality. She aches to give personalized meaning (the kind she so blithely adheres to “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”) to a cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Want You.” But the original music here is infinitely more captivating. “I love the way life screwed up the way you’re looking at me,” Hawkins says on the half-spoken, half-sung “Listen.” A murky, ominous bassline (courtesy of bassist Mark Egan), a menacing pipe organ, and metal-tinged electric guitars give the track a wholly sinister sense of want.

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After a false start, the lush midtempo ballad “Before I Walk on Fire” blooms into a desolate plea for love, deliverance, and sacrifice. And many a think piece could be written exploring the Electra complexities of “Carry Me”: “Do you love your mother?/’Cause, God, I love mine/In a dream she let me love her/Gotta hand it to my mind.” The lyric is preceded by a series of moans and whimpers that are the musical equivalent of Meg Ryan’s infamous diner-orgasm—only this one could be real.

Perhaps another reason the album failed to spawn any other hits is that Hawkins didn’t fit comfortably in any one niche: The resplendent “Saviour Child” mingles radio-friendly synth-pop with more organic instrumentation, while the funky “Mysteries We Understand” is a mixture of pop, rock, blues, blending drum loops and cascading synth chords.

Rick Chertoff and Ralph Schuckett’s immaculate production, dipped in thick coats of backdrop whispers, city sounds, and other hidden treasures, is certainly worthy of headphones. There’s a percussive, jungle-like quality to songs like “Live and Let Love,” with its crisscrossing rhythms and melodies, but the song’s metallic, synthesized crickets seem inextricably bound to the concrete jungle of a big city. To wit, “California Here I Come” is told from the perspective of a native New Yorker hungrily eyeing the Sunshine State like a predator.

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After a decade of listening, these are only some of the discoveries that lie hidden in wait on Tongues and Tails. Sonically intricate and emotionally raw, it’s about as complex as pop music gets.

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 Label: Columbia  Release Date: April 21, 1992  Buy: Amazon

Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani is the co-founder and co-editor of Slant Magazine. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Village Voice, and others. He is also an award-winning screenwriter/director and festival programmer.

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