Word: rasping
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When Hoffa emerged from jail in 1971, his eyes were as fiercely intent as ever and his voice still had its cold, flat, intimidating rasp. He got a $1.7 million pension settlement from the generous Teamsters, but he wanted much more than that. Everyone who knew Jimmy Hoffa well felt that he was bitterly determined to gain his revenge on Frank Fitzsimmons...
...punctuates Taupin's lyrical line in arresting ways. There is a curious blend of sophistication and primitivism in Elton's assertive piano style that makes it an instantly recognizable musical signature-as unmistakable in its way as a Beach Boys harmony or Joe Cocker's sandpaper rasp. Elton's own voice is a supple instrument. He can growl like Mick Jagger or sing an insinuating lyric plaint. He writes for himselfnot surprisingly with supreme correctness, confidence, even elegance. To an unusual degree, he is the only one who can effectively sing the songs...
...think of every joke you have heard about New York over the past decade and here it is-and Bancroft cannot make much of the bits and scraps she is given. She is misdirected by Melvin Frank (A Touch of Class) to underline cartoon New York mannerisms: a threatened rasp in the voice that can easily twitch into hysteria, a battery of body movements that look like preliminaries for infantry combat...
...moves in to replace the voice when the words are over, the organ mounting upwards, giving the song a solid feeling and making the long, wordy lines seem to rise and fall in a grand rhythm. Dylan's voice on Blood on The Tracks is somewhere between the hard rasp of his classic period and the mellower country tones he affected after John Wesley Harding. The new combination isn't entirely successful--the way he whines "I--yeh--dee--aht Wind" is annoying and he hasn't yet recaptured the superb compromise of John Wesley Harding where he found...
GIMMICKRY and sentimentality are not enough. A good book of poetry should be both well-written and philosophical, expressing a cohesion of experience. Flying Inland, by Kathleen Spivack, is neither. Spivack's poetry lacks a unifying voice. Each poem remains a solitary, cricket-like rasp, grating in the reader's ear. Nothing justifies printing poor writing in any case, and nothing justifies placing these poems in a collection...