1 	Small Blue Thing 	4:04
2 	Caramel 	3:06
3 	(If You Were) In My Movie 	2:55
4 	Gypsy 	4:09
5 	Marlene On The Wall 	4:15
6 	(I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May 	3:36
7 	Harbor Song 	4:17
8 	Headshots 	2:54
9 	Songs In Red And Gray 	4:15
10 	Stockings 	3:39
11 	Some Journey 	4:22
12 	Bound 	4:15

Bass – Mike Visceglia
Electric Guitar – Gerry Leonard
Vocals, Acoustic Guitar – Suzanne Vega 

The first in a proposed four-volume collection of intimate re-recordings of Suzanne Vega’s catalog, Close Up, Vol. 1 focuses on Vega’s love songs, which means that her two biggest hits, “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner,” are nowhere to be heard. The best-known tune here may be “Marlene on the Wall,” a song from her 1985 debut, which indicates that this is a bit of a crate-digging exercise, reaching deep into various corners from throughout her career. Vega’s new arrangements are anchored on acoustics but not strictly stripped naked: there are other guitars, sometimes electrics, along with traces of bass and percussion, enough to give this some texture and shade but not enough to distract from the songs themselves, all of which are nicely chosen and warmly delivered. There are no radical reinterpretations, only unadorned readings that reveal the sound structure of her readings and her sly, subtle singing. ---Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AllMusic Review

Back in the mid-80s, when folk music was in the doldrums, a New York-based acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter was hailed as the scene's new saviour, thanks to her cool, classy songs and often highly personal lyrics. Whether "folk" was the right description for Suzanne Vega is of course debatable, for there were few traditional influences in much of her work, but she deservedly sold millions of albums and notched up hits with Luka and Tom's Diner. Now she has decided to re-record much of her catalogue in new "stripped down versions", with four themed albums that will each include songs from across her career. The first set, Love Songs, includes the 1985 favourites Marlene on the Wall and Small Blue Thing, but if you switch between the original vinyl and the new CD there are not that many differences. She has removed the synthesisers from Lenny Kaye's original production but added electric guitar, while her singing is now a little slower and more confident, but with the same quiet charm. From later in her career there's Songs in Red and Gray, a gently edgy piece about meeting the daughter of a former lover, or the more recent Bound, on love and ageing. If these were new songs this would be one of the albums of the year. ---Robin Denselow, theguardian.com

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01 Intro 
02 Tom's Diner 
03 Small Blue Thing 
04 Some Journey 
05 Cracking 
06 The Queen And The Soldier 
07 Song Intro 
08 Knight Moves 
09 Freeze Tag 
10 Song Intro 
11 Marlene On The Wall 
12 Undertow 
13 Straight Lines 
14 Song Intro 
15 Neighborhood Girls 
16 Gypsy (Encore)

Suzanne Vega 
The Speakeasy 
New York, NY 
April 17, 1985

Live at the Speakeasy is an interesting snapsnot of the young Suzanne Vega. Recorded in 1985, at the time her eponymous debut album was released, it's a stripped back solo performance - just vocals and guitar.

As her debut album was pretty musically sparse anyway, this isn't a problem - indeed the intimate nature of the performance is the perfect fit for this collection of tracks. During the gig she performed all ten songs from the Suzanne Vega album, as well as "Gypsy" and "Tom's Diner", both which would appear on her next album, Solitude Standing, released in 1987.

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1. Undertow			play
2. When Heroes Go Down
3. My Favorite Plum
4. Solitude Standing
5. Cracking
6. Last Years Troubles	play
7. Solitaire
8. Tombstone
9. Blood Makes Noise
10. 50-50 Chance
11. Penitent
12. Straight Lines
13. Pornographers Dream
14. Instant of the Hour After 

Acoustic Guitar – Gerry Leonard, Suzanne Vega
Bass – Michael Visceglia
Electric Guitar – Gerry Leonard
Percussion – Doug Yowell
Producer – Suzanne Vega
Strings [String Quartet] – Brooklyn Rider
Vocals – Suzanne Vega

The third in a series of thematic albums that find Suzanne Vega revisiting her songbook (and not incidentally creating new recordings of her older songs that she owns rather than some major label), Close-Up, Vol. 3: States of Being collects 14 tunes that focus on various forms of emotional turmoil, and encompass what she calls “the freakier side of my songwriting.” Just as she did on the first two Close-Up albums, Vega strips these songs down to their essence, and while her guitar isn’t the only instrument on these new versions, the arrangements are spare and intimate even when she introduces strings and a backing band to the proceedings, and her voice is front and center at all times, her performances carrying the weight of her elegant wordplay and carefully structured scenarios. Vega produced Close-Up, Vol. 3, and her choices are clever, summoning an impressive degree of atmosphere and color with relatively simple backing (and the distorted guitar and percussion on “Blood Makes Noise” do an impressive job of standing in for the busy electronic clatter of the original recording). Vega’s vocal performances here are strong and confident, often more so than they were on her early albums, and she’s lived with this material long enough to communicate the desires and anxieties of her characters like a gifted actress. And like the other volumes in this series, this features a new song, in this case “Instant of the Hour After,” a collaboration with Duncan Sheik from a theater piece drawn from the writings of Carson McCullers, and it’s certainly on a par with the other material cherry-picked from over 20 years of record-making. While fans will have to ask themselves how many of these songs they want to own again, the craft and imagination that has gone into Close-Up, Vol. 3: States of Being sets this apart from most albums in which artists re-record their songs for a new label, and the results confirm Suzanne Vega is still a powerful interpreter of her own material. ---Mark Deming, AllMusic Review

Suzanne Vega, jedna z najzdolniejszych piosenko–pisarek swojego pokolenia, wydała trzecią płytę z cztero - albumowej serii, będącej nową aranżacją jej dotychczasowego materiału. Od 11 lipca 2011 na sklepowych półkach można znaleźć jedną z najbardziej intymnych płyt piosenkarki.

Płyta “Close - Up Vol.3, States of Being” dotyczy głównie człowieka, jego stanu umysłu oraz miejsc do których trudno jest dotrzeć. Każdy może być narratorem utworów znajdujących się na płycie, ponieważ mogą dotyczyć każdego z nas.

- "Zwykłam nazywać tę serię piosenkami zdrowia psychicznego. Wyrażają one stan umysłu, ale nie tylko. Nie nazywałabym ich moimi osobistymi piosenkami, ale opisem miejsca gdzieś głęboko w człowieku" - mówi Suzanne Vega.

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