Send "Amy Winehouse " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Guardian |
 It says something about the lowly reputation of the posthumous album that Amy Winehouse's Lioness: Hidden Treasures comes accompanied by an apologetic-sounding assurance. "This isn't a Tupac situation," offered one of its compilers, producer Salaam Remi, by which he presumably means this is the first and last time Winehouse's stash of unreleased material is going to be raided, in contrast to the mind-boggling 25 albums released in the 15 years since the rapper rattled his clack.Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Amy Winehouse Lioness: Hidden Treasures Island 2011 Tell us what you think: Rate and review this album On the evidence of Lioness: Hidden Treasures, it doesn't sound as if they've got much choice. The compilers have clearly had to pull every trick in the posthumous album book in order to cobble together 45 minutes of music. There are early recordings that would probably never have seen the light of day had the artist lived. For someone who was seemingly cursed with fatally lousy judgment in most areas of her life, Winehouse was remarkably prudent when it came to the matter of releasing records: you could never have accused her of wilfully saturating the market with product, which does make you wonder what she would have made of the wider world being exposed to a ho-hum version of The Girl from Ipanema. There are big-name special guests drafted in to bolster unfinished songs. ?uestlove of the Roots – a man fearless enough to consider forming a band with Winehouse a year before her death – plays on the beautiful 2003 out-take, Halftime. Nas adds a rap to Like Smoke, a track from her unfinished third album: "You know how me and Amy, we're straight playas," he offers, a funny thing to say about a woman famed for being publicly heartbroken, and who drank herself to death at 27. And it concludes with the unmistakable, weirdly unsettling sound of a lo-fi demo vocal that's had an entire song constructed around it. Nevertheless, Lioness: Hidden Treasures still tells you a lot about Amy Winehouse, albeit sometimes unwittingly. The shift in her vocals from the careful enunciation of her early material to the smeared, ragged voice on her later recordings is pretty striking. At least part of that change must have been down to what the accompanying blurb tactfully refers to as Winehouse's demons, but it also speaks volumes about her confidence as a singer: she's gone from sounding eager to please to sounding like a woman who only cares about pleasing herself. So does comparing a cover of the Shirelles' Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? from 2004 with a demo of Valerie from two years later. It's interesting to hear producer Mark Ronson feeling his way towards what would become his signature sound on the former, but Winehouse doesn't really inhabit the song. By contrast, the Valerie is taken at a speed closer to the Zutons' original than the hit version, but the lubricious crackle in Winehouse performance is already there. She makes the innocuous line about missing your ginger hair sound almost indescribably filthy, turning something that started life as a song about a lovelorn boy dreamily wondering what happened to his ex on its head....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Lioness is not Amy Winehouse's long-lost gem or interrupted follow-up album, nor is it a revealing view of a tortured star in the fraught final stages of her life. Instead, in true record-industry fashion, Lioness is a collection of odds-and-sods cobbled together over the course of nine years of recordings to create something that kinda-sorta feels like an album. Executive produced by longtime partner Salaam Remi, who helmed her 2003 debut album, Frank, Lioness carries little of the subversive swagger or playful arrogance of the Mark Ronson-dominated Back to Black. Whether it's merely all the material that was left, or an effort to salvage her image after years of tabloid drama and self-abuse, Lioness presents a picture of a talented singer at her most restrained and polite. And let's be honest: Polite is the last thing we expect (or want) from Amy Winehouse. That's not to say the results aren't satisfying: No matter what she's singing, it remains thrilling to hear that voice come to life again. On Lioness, for better or for worse, she takes on the role of standards singer: It feels like a hearkening back to her jazzy Frank days, the result of having Remi at the head of the project rather than Ronson. When it works, it really works: Opener "Our Day Will Come" is a gorgeous blend of triumph and autumnal wistfulness, a savvy intro to a record that's bound to evoke emotions just as nuanced and conflicted in its listeners. However, on tracks like "The Girl From Ipanema" or first single and Tony Bennett duet "Body and Soul", she sounds like a lounge singer, that unmistakable wit and smarmy charm only a faint glint in otherwise serviceable performances. Considering that Mark Ronson-- producer of her signature tracks like "Rehab"-- is probably more responsible for her fame than anyone else, it's surprising to see his involvement reduced to such a minuscule level. As ever, his contributions are the highlight: A new version of the Zutons' "Valerie" turns what was a tongue-in-cheek cover into one of her most infectious vocal performances. Meanwhile, his melodramatic rendering of Carole King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" toes the line between elegant and overblown, but better yet it's a shroud of pomp surrounding one of Winehouse's most delicately powerful vocals. When she breaks out into her best falsetto on the track's bridge, it's one of the few moments on Lioness that feels truly, heartbreakingly poignant, enough to cut through its stodgy accompaniment....full text |
| Prettymuchamazing |
| It’s crucial to manage your expectations when approaching Lioness: Hidden Treasures, the first posthumous Amy Winehouse release. Winehouse, a first class talent who committed a highly public and protracted suicide that culminated with her death last July, deserves so much better than this. A hodgepodge of standards, alternate versions of her older songs, and a scant few new original tracks, Lioness would have been an interesting and somewhat illuminating bonus disc to an expanded edition of Back to Black, in an imaginary world where Winehouse were still alive. Instead, it’s being presented as a standalone collection. The timing of its release is dubious, its value questionable. But if you share my opinion that any new Amy Winehouse material, however inferior, is a good thing to have in your life, then Lioness is a meager boon. Unsurprisingly, Winehouse’s death hangs above this mostly unexceptional album (especially on opener “Our Day Will Come,” which attains true pathos). Every word Winehouse sings, even when not her own (too many here are not), can’t help but gain poignancy by the tragedy. Indeed, her entire catalogue is retroactively colored by her unraveling. The days when we raised a celebratory glass and shouted “no, no, no” along with her are far behind us. It’s impossible to enjoy her music, which always foreshadowed her fate, without feeling complicit. Amy Winehouse was a genius of vocal phrasing and reinterpretation. Her two proper albums Frank and Back to Black, steeped in the sounds of doo-wop, girl groups, and jazz, were more than just pastiche put-ons. Her music was both of the moment and of another era, a balance that many pop chanteuses try to emulate but never quite master. With her Ronnie Spector beehive and eye makeup, never a costume but a consequence of being born in the wrong decade, Winehouse lived, breathed, and wore her influences. Even on Lioness’ weaker tracks, such as the utterly out of place cover of “Girl from Ipanema,” one of Winehouse’s earliest recordings, she sells the well-worn as if it were a discovery of her own. Her deep soulfulness was far beyond her 27 years, for better (for us) or much worse (for her). Sentimentality aside, Lioness does not stand up to the evaluation of a steely ear. Its first two tracks are the best. “Our Day Will Come” (a Ruby and the Romantics cover that sounds like an original) and “Between the Cheats” (a playful Winehouse original that sounds like soul classic) would have fit nicely on Back to Black. Amy Winehouse so thoroughly integrated the past into her pen that I often found myself returning to the liner notes to check the authorship of a given song....full text |
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