I Can't Stand the Rain

The opening percussion of I Can’t Stand the Rain is memorable, but waiting for that effect alone leaves much of Ann Peebles’s album unexplored. Across ten songs, affection, suspicion and warning occupy different positions. Follow where the singer changes her stance, rather than asking one famous title to explain the entire record.

Hi Records issued the album in1974. The label identifies Royal Recording Studios in Memphis,1973, and producer Willie Mitchell in its recording credits. The title song and the album therefore need separate chronology. The selected edition keeps the ten-song programme without bonus tracks. Peebles’s involvement in writing several songs also gives a reason to hear her as more than the recognisable voice of one hit.

A sound that opens the room

Don Bryant recalled Mitchell’s idea for the electric timbales at the front of the title track. Their rainlike association need not turn into a claim that actual rainfall was recorded. Remember the spaces between those sounds, then notice the change when the vocal enters. An atmospheric effect and a singer sustaining a sentence perform different tasks. Comparing them offers a more useful route than merely identifying the instrument.

Different terms within a relationship

Titles such as Do I Need You, If We Can’t Trust Each Other and You Got to Feed the Fire suggest questions, conditions and continuing effort. They need not form a literal chronology of the performer’s private life. Ask what each speaker wants at that moment. A forceful delivery does not remove disappointment, and a gentle line need not lack conviction. The relationship between vocal strength and the attitude of a sentence is worth following from song to song.

What a short song leaves behind

These compact tracks can leave a phrase in the mind after the next song begins. Hear the sequence through to One Way Street instead of repeating only a chorus. Remember the warning of the ninth track beside the longing of the opener. Rather than deciding whether the singer is simply strong or vulnerable, listen for different ways of holding a position. Even when comparing another Memphis recording, keep Peebles’s phrase endings and brief silences in the foreground.