Amy Winehouse
Frank [vinyl reissue]
ISLAND/UNIVERSAL
8/10
Thanks to a penetrating new documentary, right now there’s a heightened awareness about Amy Winehouse. Frank, the supremely gifted singer’s debut album, has been reissued just in time to ride that wave of remembrance, newly remastered in digital and vinyl form. On first release in 2003 it was received warmly (later nominated for Britain’s Mercury Prize), and is considered a worthy precursor to Winehouse’s blockbuster Back to Black. Twelve years later, though, it’s impossible to consider the stellar album without acknowledging its place in the artist’s short and turbulent career.
To those who only know Winehouse from the lush, sexy Mark Ronson/Salaam Remi-produced follow up, Frank will seem starkly lo-fi. The instrumentation is often sparse—just a guitar or piano complementing the singing—and the production is a mishmash of varying efforts. Once it was out, Winehouse herself was quick to deride the marketing of it. Yet it towers above competing releases—then and now—and plants the seeds of a career that consumed us all just a few years later. Hearing Winehouse on Frank is to marvel in what was to come—and what could have been.
