New Eva Cassidy - "Imagine"

As you can tell, I'm with Paulwp (esp on his choice of favorite tracks). No goosebumps here, even tho its the best audio quality so far. Worth having, but somehow its doesn't seem that Eva made an emotional connection with these songs.

I bought "Imagine" and found the studio ambiance is wonderful. Her voice is clear and effortless and her guitar is very good. What is missing for me is her emotion that is so strong on her earlier recordings. At times the raw, not perfect nature of this recording is better than the early ones, it shows Eva as she was experimenting with well known songs, but the finished quality is not at the point of the earlier disks.

As I think about what little I know of Eva, she was a perfectionist and had very little self confidence. My guess is these recordings did not meet her or her parents expectations for Eva and thus have become secondary releases. For any Eva fan this is a must own disk, it is very good, but for those who want to own just two or three it's not to the standard of "Live at Blues Ally", "Songbird" or my daughter and my 'cuddle' disk "Time After Time".

JD- you've got it right. Guitar and voice excellent, performance only so-so. Its a little sterile sounding. For me, the emotional impact of her work is primary and I must admit to being a little disappointed.

"Imagine" is, I think, a compilation of songs in the vaults that did not make it onto other albums.

Regardless, an interesting posthumous release.

I think it's a great CD; her version of "Fever" is especially good. I was surprised to learn that Eva Cassidy died in 1996 at the age of 33 from melanoma. What a loss to the music world.