Joan Armatrading - Walk Under Ladders
#452
By Chris Natale
September 1981
Joan Armatrading
Walk Under Ladders
Genre: Rock of the times
Allen’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Chris’ Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Highlights:
When I Get It Right
Walk Under Ladders
The Weakness In Me
Let’s get it out there...Joan Armatrading is the shit. Songwriting, singing, composing…she’s brilliant.
Walk Under Ladders is Joan Armatrading’s seventh record. If one way to determine the juice of a person is by the company they keep, then Armatrading is a full-on V-8.
Having recorded her previous album, Me, Myself, I with a backing band who would soon become the house band for Late Night with David Letterman, on Walk Under Ladders, Armatrading brings Andy Partridge from XTC and Thomas Dolby on board for turns on guitar and synthesizer. .
While Ladders and Me, Myself, I both clock in at 35 minutes, Me, Myself, I feels like a much fuller record...one that has more heft. Ladders is not without it’s gems though. “When I Get It Right” is a song from the perspective of the perpetually frustrated and criticized, who just can’t take it anymore. Despite subject matter so bleak and desperate, it’s a catchy earworm that may provoke a little swagger in a homebound, sing-to-yourself moment.
“I’m Lucky” flips the script, though, as Armatrading, introduced through some powerful Thomas Dolby 1980s synthesizer, gushes about her good fortune in life and love. Good on you, Joan…
The other lyrical powder keg is “The Weakness In Me”. Here, Armatrading lays it all out there, the good and the bad of loving someone deeply and all the vulnerability that it presents. The pain of being both in the presence and the absence of someone…
Armatrading would go on to make a total of 19 albums. And while Ladders isn’t her strongest as a whole, it has songs that really speak to the full range of human emotions and do so through some powerful musical arrangements and performances. That’s a win in the record business...
https://open.spotify.com/album/1DC3bRduAQzGnktyGiEjiQ?si=W-wHw7ZLRXS8nVazEYHPlQ
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