music fits in with that of Norah Jones or Eva Cassidy. Some of his songs are pretty recognizable, but it was this lesser known song from his first album that jumped out at me. It's because "Arms of a Woman" seemed to resemble James Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves." The two singer-songwriters may have been going through different experiences at the time, but they have common ground. They both write of feeling anxieties dissipating when in the presence of a specific woman.
He begins the song singing (as the title suggests) that he feels "at ease in the arms of a woman." Unfortunately, he's often alone in a state that's a great distance from the comfort that he'd find in the familiar. Amos uses "miles" as a unit of measurement when explaining the distance, but being thousands of miles away from some place could easily be a figure of speech used to explain his emotional state. She then takes him home when she wakes him. The second verse is written in a different pattern. He describes a childlike fear of imaginary ghosts that haunt him (like someone afraid of the dark). As much afraid he is in this lack of light, he can't muster the courage to flip the light switch. It's that woman in his life that soothes Lee, taking the singer "home" from that anxious state.
Unlike the J. T. song that I mentioned earlier (where three verses and a refrain read like a meditative stream of consciousness), much of Amos Lee's song is anchored by the repetition of some key components. With all due respect to the artist, I would suggest that the limitation as an expression of how lyrics alone may not perfectly depict what he feels. Changing around the pattern of delivery on his second run through the lyrics allows emotion to take more control. Both songs have similar messages though conveyed with varying styles of American folk music. Both are well crafted songs about what brings these sensitive men to a calm state of mind.
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