From the News-Press: http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070727/ENT12/70726076

Suzanne Vega: 'Beauty & Crime'
Originally posted on July 27, 2007

2 and 1/2 stars (out of 4)

Though filled with emotional turmoil, Suzanne Vega’s songs sound careful and restrained. This tension often works — think of 1986’s “Luka” — but sometimes the calm surface deadens the underlying turbulence. “Beauty & Crime,” Vega’s first album of new material in six years, is her New York study, an examination of the city past and present. Its uniformity makes it a mixed bag.

Vega excels at character studies, and Edith Wharton, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, `70s graffiti artist Zephyr, and a post-9/11 city cop all turn up here. Individually, the 11 brief songs offer deft sketches of a New York that dazzles “with her beauty and her crime.” But collectively, the tracks dissolve within the soft electronic beats, crystal acoustic guitars, and sweeping strings. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo plays electric guitar on three tracks, but, in keeping with the album’s aesthetics, he’s unobtrusive.