Extraordinary Chicago Songwriter Succumbs
“Diane Izzo debuted in 1999 with one of the best singer-songwriter albums ever out of Chicago, One,” Greg Kot writes for the Tribune. “She never officially followed it up, though she continued to record prolifically and was working on an ambitious movie project when she died Friday of cancer in Albuquerque, N.M.”
See also: “When Diane Izzo’s debut album, One, arrived in 1999, I said it marked ‘the arrival of one of the most breathtaking young singer-songwriters to emerge out of Chicago in recent years.'”
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“There have been a million angry kiss-off songs written throughout rock history,” Jim DeRogatis wrote when he reviewed One. “In 1999 it takes a strong voice to put a unique spin on the form, but it’s one of several impressive feats by Chicago singer-songwriter Diane Izzo on her debut album One.
“Partly Izzo accomplishes this via the poetic touches in the lyrics of her story-songs. ‘Once upon the ship you waved back to all your subjects/Shooting from your hip and your gorgeous death trap,’ she sings of a self-inflated amour in ‘The Real One.’ Even more impressively, Izzo cycles through a wide range of emotions – anger, pain, pride and defiance – while somehow making a powerful hook out of the tune’s short but emphatic kicker: ‘Now you’re gone, and to me you’re done.'”
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“Diane released an extraordinary album in 1999 called One,” Marc Campbell writes at Dangerous Minds. “It should have brought her the kind of attention bestowed upon Patti Smith and PJ Harvey. But it was not to be. She retreated from the music scene and ultimately ended up in Taos where she took care of a ranch that once housed Aldous Huxley. But she was still determined to make her mark musically and in film. At the time of her death, she was working on a film project with [her partner] Marco, Black & Gold, which provides an inspiring glimpse of the magic that Diane was still conjuring in the last year of her life.”
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One.
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1. Oh Death.
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2. Horse of Diana.
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3. Black & Gold.
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More tracks at Izzo’s MySpace page.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on March 3, 2011