In My Arms maxi-single
Artist: Plumb
Label: Curb (check download retailers for availability)
Length: 8 tracks/50 minutes 24 seconds 
 
Hasn't Tiffany "Plumb" Arbuckle Lee had a peculiar relationship with the general market? In '03,"Real" hit the top 20 of Billboard's hot adult-contemporary radio chart. A couple years later, she scaled the trade magazine's dance-oriented radio list with uptempo remixes of "Cut." There's nothing necessarily unusual about a slow song being given an uptick in beats-per-minute to chart as a dance jam. More unusual wasn't only that Plumb was primarily known as a cCm artist, but that the song is about people putting blades to their flesh. And unlike the perception of some Goth kids, perhaps, Mrs. Lee wasn't singing about that being a good thing. 

Turning a ballad to her baby boy Oliver into another club thumper is another unusual move for a woman who wants her artistry to reach beyond the confines of her fellow saints. Good for her. Ditto for the dancers blessed to hear this on the floor of wherever they might go to get down. 

The maxi-single offers four radio edits, a couple of them shorter than the downtempo original, and four longer treatments from seven to over nine minutes in length. 

Textures range from commercially trancey (the Bronlewee & Bose remixes--thanks for keeping the original's piano motif, guys) to darkly shiny tribal house (Scotty K), with a sinister hi-NRG gallop (Bimbo Jones) and housey techno-disco with what sounds like a touch of guitar (Gomi). 

The subject matter is uncommon enough for the decadent club music world. Being so personal a song no doubt gives Plumb incentive to sing with the kind of tenderly fierce passion that almost makes whatever music behind her incidental to her sentiments, too. 

That said, Bronlewee & Bose's hewing closest to the original (a really relative thing, in this instance) and Gomi's slightly more organic touch tie for my favorite ways Plumb is served here. 

Contempo' Christian radio likely has little use for these re-treatments of what's already a multi-format hit in its original state. It's nonetheless heartening to hear Plumb's commitment to being salt and light in unexpected placed. And it's pretty tasty salt and pretty light she brings, at that. 

Jamie Lee Rake