Suzanne Vega - Close-Up Series (2014) [5CD + DVD] Box Set

Suzanne has combined all 4 CDs from the Close-Up series in a hard bound book which also contains a CD with all the bonus tracks, previously only available separately and only available digitally. Also included is a DVD of Suzanne’s Close-Up show at City Winery in New York City.












Close-Up Vol. 1, Love Songs is the eighth studio album release by New York-based singer/songwriter and musician Suzanne Vega. The album consists of re-recordings of songs from Vega's back catalogue with stripped-down arrangements that highlight her lyrics and melodies. Love Songs is the first volume of Vega's Close-Up Collection which were released over the next two years; and was followed by the albums People and Places, States of Being and Songs of Family.

The first in a proposed four-volume collection of intimate re-recordings of Suzanne Vega’s catalog, Close Up, Vol. 1 focuses on Vega’s love songs, which means that her two biggest hits, “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner,” are nowhere to be heard. The best-known tune here may be “Marlene on the Wall,” a song from her 1985 debut, which indicates that this is a bit of a crate-digging exercise, reaching deep into various corners from throughout her career. Vega’s new arrangements are anchored on acoustics but not strictly stripped naked: there are other guitars, sometimes electrics, along with traces of bass and percussion, enough to give this some texture and shade but not enough to distract from the songs themselves, all of which are nicely chosen and warmly delivered. There are no radical reinterpretations, only unadorned readings that reveal the sound structure of her readings and her sly, subtle singing. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing

01. Small Blue Thing
02. Caramel
03. (If You Were) In My Movie
04. Gypsy
05. Marlene On The Wall
06. (I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May
07. Harbor Song
08. Headshots
09. Songs In Red And Gray
10. Stockings
11. Some Journey
12. Bound

All songs written and composed by Suzanne Vega.

Album Released: February 2, 2010
Close-Up Series Box Set Released: August 12, 2014












Close-Up Vol. 2, People and Places is the ninth studio album released by New York-based singer/songwriter and musician Suzanne Vega. The album consists of re-recordings of songs from Vega's back catalogue with stripped-down arrangements that highlight her lyrics and melodies. The track "The Man Who Played God" was included in its original version on the album Dark Night of the Soul, by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse.

The second installment of Suzanne Vega’s four-part thematically arranged intimate re-recordings of her catalog is People & Places, a concept that allows for the inclusion of her two biggest hits, “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner.” Both are here, given austere arrangements that are emblematic of the entirety of the album. Much of this is spare enough to suggest that the album contains nothing but Vega and her guitar, but these are not solo re-recordings – they’re tastefully colored with strings, electric guitars, and light percussion, subtly changing the feel of some songs but not the intent. Apart from selections from the densely produced 99.9 F°, there are no great reinterpretations of Vega’s work and even those three don’t feel drastically different, just unadorned, fitting the “Close-Up” concept quite well. Curiously, the entire Close-Up project sidesteps nostalgia, and not just because Vega finds space to include a new song, “The Man Who Played God,” co-written with the late Mark Linkous and Danger Mouse, here. She may be revisiting her past but she’s not attempting to re-create it, and this clear-eyed, unsentimental attitude goes a long way toward making these records work. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing

01. Luka
02. Zephyr & I
03. New York Is A Woman
04. In Liverpool
05. Calypso
06. Fat Man & Dancing Girl (Vega, Mitchell Froom)
07. The Queen And The Soldier
08. Rock In This Pocket (Song Of David)
09. Angel's Doorway
10. Ironbound/Fancy Poultry (Vega, Anton Sanko)
11. Neighborhood Girls
12. Tom's Diner
13. The Man Who Played God (Danger Mouse, Mark Linkous, Vega)

All songs written and composed by Suzanne Vega, except where noted.

Album Released: October 12, 2010
Close-Up Series Box Set Released: August 12, 2014












Close-Up Vol. 3, States of Being is the tenth studio album released by New York-based singer/songwriter and musician Suzanne Vega. The album consists of re-recordings of songs from Vega's back catalogue with stripped-down arrangements that highlight her lyrics and melodies. The songs included are her most haunting songs, which Suzanne used to call the "Mental Health" songs.

The third in a series of thematic albums that find Suzanne Vega revisiting her songbook (and not incidentally creating new recordings of her older songs that she owns rather than some major label), Close-Up, Vol. 3: States of Being collects 14 tunes that focus on various forms of emotional turmoil, and encompass what she calls “the freakier side of my songwriting.” Just as she did on the first two Close-Up albums, Vega strips these songs down to their essence, and while her guitar isn’t the only instrument on these new versions, the arrangements are spare and intimate even when she introduces strings and a backing band to the proceedings, and her voice is front and center at all times, her performances carrying the weight of her elegant wordplay and carefully structured scenarios. Vega produced Close-Up, Vol. 3, and her choices are clever, summoning an impressive degree of atmosphere and color with relatively simple backing (and the distorted guitar and percussion on “Blood Makes Noise” do an impressive job of standing in for the busy electronic clatter of the original recording). Vega’s vocal performances here are strong and confident, often more so than they were on her early albums, and she’s lived with this material long enough to communicate the desires and anxieties of her characters like a gifted actress. And like the other volumes in this series, this features a new song, in this case “Instant of the Hour After,” a collaboration with Duncan Sheik from a theater piece drawn from the writings of Carson McCullers, and it’s certainly on a par with the other material cherry-picked from over 20 years of record-making. While fans will have to ask themselves how many of these songs they want to own again, the craft and imagination that has gone into Close-Up, Vol. 3: States of Being sets this apart from most albums in which artists re-record their songs for a new label, and the results confirm Suzanne Vega is still a powerful interpreter of her own material. Reviewed by Mark Deming of allmusic.com

Track Listing

01. Undertow
02. When Heroes Go Down
03. My Favorite Plum
04. Solitude Standing (Suzanne Vega, Michael Visceglia, Anton Sanko, Marc Shulman, Stephen Ferrera)
05. Cracking
06. Last Years Trouble
07. Solitaire
08. Tombstone
09. Blood Makes Noise
10. 50-50 Chance
11. Penitent
12. Straight Lines
13. Pornographer's Dream
14. Instant Of The Hour After (Vega, Duncan Sheik)

All songs written and composed by Suzanne Vega, except where noted.

Album Released: July 11, 2011
Close-Up Series Box Set Released: August 12, 2014












Close-Up Vol. 4, Songs of Family is the eleventh studio album by New York-based singer/songwriter and musician Suzanne Vega. The album consists of re-recordings of songs from Vega's back catalogue with stripped-down arrangements that highlight her lyrics and melodies. Two of the songs, "Brother Mine" and "The Silver Lady", are songs Vega wrote more than 30 years ago, but are only now seeing an official recording and release. "Daddy is White" is a song she wrote back in 2007, previously only existing as a demo attached to a New York Times article titled "Which Side Are You On?" she wrote in 2008.

Suzanne Vega concludes her series of albums reexamining her songbook with Close-Up, Vol. 4: Songs of Family, and given the album's themes, it's appropriate that this is the most spare and intimate installment in this mostly acoustic series. These 14 songs all deal with familial relationships, albeit in many different ways, from a sly contemplation of her marriage ("Honeymoon Suite") to studying the emotional fallout of her divorce ("Soap and Water"), from meeting her biological father for the first time ("Pilgrimage") to revisiting the neighborhood where she grew up ("Ludlow Street"), while also finding room to celebrate her love for her daughter ("World Before Columbus") and the grim tale of another child whose relationship with her folks is not as rosy ("Bad Wisdom"). Vega (who served as her own producer) and her musical director Gerry Leonard have given all the albums in this series a clean and uncluttered sound, but Songs of Family aims for an even more Spartan approach, and while multi-instrumentalist Leonard had added some artful accompaniment on several tracks, the music is subtle even at its most passionate, and Vega's vocals and lyrics are front and center throughout; in her liner notes, Vega declares this album "has the folkiest sound of the four volumes," and that suits these songs quite well. Like the previous three Close-Up albums, Songs of Family is dominated by songs Vega has recorded before, but this set also features three songs that have never before appeared on one of her albums. "The Silver Lady" is a fantasy tale Vega first wrote as a teenager, "Brother Mine" is another bit of juvenilia that's clever and charming, and "Daddy Is White" is a blunt but perceptive autobiographical sketch of how racial attitudes shaped her own upbringing. (The song first surfaced as a demo recording Vega posted along with an essay for The New York Times.) Like its siblings, Close-Up, Vol. 4: Songs of Family may not connect with casual fans happy to hold on to the original versions of these songs, but the subtle but real emotional gravity of these new performances is impressive, and at in its best moments Vega has found fresh life and depth in these reinterpretations; this is stronger and more affecting work than most artists achieve when they give their songs a second try in the studio. Reviewed by Mark Deming of allmusic.com

Track Listing

01. Rosemary
02. Honeymoon Suite
03. World Before Columbus
04. As You Are Now
05. Soap And Water
06. Widows Walk
07. Blood Sings
08. Bad Wisdom
09. Ludlow Street
10. Tired Of Sleeping
11. Pilgrimage (Vega, A. Sanko)
12. Brother Mine
13. The Silver Lady
14. Daddy Is White

All songs written and composed by Suzanne Vega, except where noted.

Album Released: September 21, 2012
Close-Up Series Box Set Released: August 12, 2014












This is the special fifth disc that has all the bonus tracks, previously only available separately and only available digitally.




Track Listing

01. 99.9 F°
02. It Makes Me Wonder
03. Freeze Tag
04. Knight Moves
05. Luka (Spanish Version)
06. Frank And Ava
07. Wooden Horse
08. Song Of Sand
09. Room Off The Street
10. Priscilla
11. Anniversary
12. Language


Album Released: August 12, 2014
Close-Up Series Box Set Released: August 12, 2014












The DVD of Suzanne’s Close-Up show at City Winery in New York City, has live acoustic versions of some of your favorite songs as well as some songs you have never heard live before. The DVD also features a backstage interview and some behind the scenes footage of rehearsal for the show.




Chapter Listing

01. Introduction from Suzanne
02. Tom’s Diner
03. Interview
04. Rock In This Pocket
05. Interview
06. Gypsy
07. Interview
08. Solitude Standing
09. Interview
10. Room Off The Street
11. Interview
12. Silver Lady
13. Interview
14. Daddy Is White
15. Interview
16. Penitent
17. Interview
18. Luka


DVD Released: August 12, 2014
Close-Up Series Box Set Released: August 12, 2014