When the vocal is prominent in music I want it to be worth it's place; at best - either undeniably pleasing or irrespectively distinctive, at least - it shouldn't be inconclusive or insincere. The great soprano Sarah Leonard sits comfortably beside the terminal mumbler Mark E. Smith in my collection. Between the siren and the wail, there is room for every quirk, croak and crooner, but the mundane and the sham would do best to follow Brian Eno's self-imposed zipped-lip.
Rachel Taylor Brown, Laura Barrett and Vanessa Peters each have 2009 CD releases, each are 'conceptual' albums of a kind, but their music differs distinctly. They sing in similar ranges (Brown doesn't use her Soprano), so couldn't they cover one another's work? It's doubtful, because apart from the musical differences, their sensibilities and ideas about music seem too far apart. How so? What makes them worth hearing, (as they all are) and what determines the musical forms they have chosen as vehicles for expression?
Vanessa Peters: 'Sweetheart, Keep Your Chin Up.' Little Sandwich Music.
Descriptors attached to artists, such as 'Americana', often don't help much - but the associations of artists can be telling. Peters' publicity describes her style as "a blend of rootsy pop jangle and country noir"... (isn't that contemporary country?), but also mentions that she got a lot of attention after Aimee Mann praised a video of Peters'. Despite Peters using fairy tales and myths (Odysseus, Penelope, The Sirens, etc.) as the album's basis, the loose country pop genre, is where Vanessa Peters fits - storytelling must still follow a format: With typical lilting, refrains such as "everything will be OK from now on", she delivers the chant fans demand, over and over; "you only hear what you want to know", is another. It's fine - we all occasionally want that good sing-along refrain whatever our taste. It's also predictable that elsewhere there are phrases of smooth self-examination "and most days i (sic) just hold my breath, await the next big bang".
Yet, there is more to Peters than an average country artist: Everyone should take a listen to the excellent opening track 'Good News', and for fans of this genre this is an album that is every bit as good as those by established top names.
Rachel Taylor Brown's 3rd upcoming national release (June 7, Mississippi Studios) "Susan Storm's Ugly Sister and Other Saints and Superheroes", not only defies most categorizations, it also declines to give us sweet lines of comfort. The music is enchanting, but the message is grueling. The album's title hints at the content; the songs are indeed about the dark side of personality, saints, and heroes that are more like Anti-heroes: People are possessed, hung and burnt to death; sinister family closets are emptied; saints are gently praised while god is bashed.
One of Brown's associations is that with Chris Robley, who made one of 2008's best albums (Movie Theatre Haiku). She plays in both Robley's bands and the musical structures on this album follow suit: An unpredictable series of compelling tracks that shift mood and demand attention. So when I turned to the printed lyrics (which I never do on first listen) to find that the jaunty piano & acoustic backdrop of "Zoe Of Rome" (reminiscent of the great XTC at their best), is a grim tale of hanging and burning, I was initially disappointed. 
Elsewhere the words can read like a history lesson, or use obscure botanical verbiage... even in my initial enthusiasm over the music I wondered just what Ms. Brown is driving at. The answer lies in her "persistent awe at the beauty and horror in the world" and her contention that her music makes sense in the end. And it does, on each listen the songs become more compelling, and the lingering doubts can be pushed back a little, much like the demons she's writing rings around.
Laura Barrett's VICTORY GARDEN (PAPER BAG RECORDS) offers still another approach. Here is an atmosphere of the fantastic which stays routed to earthly concepts like community and the garden. Barrett delightfully sings as if wandering around an orchard of calm thoughts and wind-chimes. Driven by percussive piano, or on her "modest" kalimba (paired dynamically with Paul Aucoin's vibraphone) and joined by woodwinds, strings, brass and a range of other percussive touches, she's achieved a sound that seems to take you inside a musical box, and out again to step onto a flying carpet and be swept away on an ocean breeze.
Barrett is the youngest of these women and it is her first full-length, but already she seems rinsed through with a wash of fine jazz influenced vocalists. The whimsy of Karen Mantler is evident and there's even a semblance of the legendary Annette Peacock's sultriness. "If somebody else can serenade their love with this song," Barrett offers, while adding onto the repeated refrain "...while I escape."
---
That I re-listened to Vanessa Peters' country music CD at all, is a testament of sorts. Country is a very stylized music form, requiring keen song writing to dislodge the inherent predictability. On those opening few tracks it's there - an unusual sense of ambiguity, in which she appears to juxtapose themes of confusion over persons absent at war, with her own sense of separation.
Even then, Peters' words and music are never as challenging as those of Rachel Taylor Brown, who has created a thing of measured force and sustained interest. The disturbing topics evened, wrestled and eventually contained by the skill of her compositions.
However, it is Laura Barrett's wily calm that appeals the most to my sensibilities. She sings "No melody, no matter how sincere, or loaded with metaphor can force you to appear", accidently providing a message for all: Nothing, in any of these albums, can force us into sympathising with the issues, emotions or concerns of these singers, nor much else - but a melody that is sincere, or loaded with metaphor, can go a long way. It is that which continues to make discovering new music worthwhile.
Copyright: Zaph Mann 2009. Reproduction with attribution is fine. Original publisher: opbmusic.org 2009
Comments are now closed.