Vega is deservedly getting the best reviews of her career for Beauty & Crime, her tip of the beret to New York City, her home since childhood and also the site of September 11th, her dead brother’s apartment, and sidewalks full of poets and fashion models. Vega gathers it all up—Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, and Edith Wharton are in there, too—and winnows it down to eleven songs that come in under forty minutes. She exacts such a detailed mixture of art (the naked sentiments in her cool, lofty lyrics, the seamless physical and emotional backdrop of NYC) and craft (the immaculate production, sophisticated arrangements, prim intonation) that the entire disc feels as much like scrimshaw as music: a small but potent treasure.
Varsity Theater, 1308 Fourth St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-604-0222.
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