Close Your Eyes

Close Your Eyes is the realization of a long-standing dream of Bic Runga: to record a collection of covers. That she adds two new original songs -- "Close Your Eyes" and "Dream a Dream" -- doesn't detract from the covers concept; it winds up enhancing it as it emphasizes the idiosyncrasies of Runga's vision. She's created a cool, sensual sound for Close Your Eyes, spinning off of her signature subdued adult alternative pop but adding in significant elements of electronica, particularly an echo of trip-hop past. Appropriately, her choice of covers falls along these lines, relying heavily on classic singer/songwriters like Nick Drake and Neil Young, but finding space for the baroque pop of Love and the Beach Boys, Françoise Hardy, cult sophsti-pop icons the Blue Nile, and Roberta Flack's standard "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." The head-turning covers are the Meters' "What'cha Say" and Kanye West's "Wolves," but both of these are given classy, bustling electronic arrangements that