Monday, February 9, 2009
Monday Music #6 (Chloe March, Kristeen Young)
If you ever want to piss me off -- let's say I'm going to take a fabulous acting role, and I must be ANGRY! -- say or imply that female singer-songwriters all sound the same. I don't even know where to begin with this one. Nobody should be saying this. It's lack of research at best and bigotry at worst.
So here I have some counterexamples, from opposite sides of a spectrum -- quiet and loud, peaceful and energetic, adjectives and adjectives. They're imprecise adjectives, and they oversimplify things, but they're sketches.
(Note, too, that these aren't opposite ends. I wouldn't even know
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Chloe March's album Divining has been mentioned a number of times on ecto. It's as lovely as they say. It's almost a score without a film. There's a sense of place, earnest and immersive. And what's truly remarkable is that it's not at all the samey new-age-compilation that the song titles might suggest. Listening to it is interesting. There are things to discover. There are ways to become lost.
Take "Soft Rain." There's more tumult here than you might expect from the title: a pitter-patter of a drum part, a backdrop more propulsive than droning. And there are quiet moments, too, when it dies down so the piano can plink out the raindrops. The song demands a window and a spring shower, but even the latter's not necessary. It'll provide one.
Listen here.
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Maybe you don't like listening to songs about soft spring rain, though. Maybe you like your rain in torrents and accompanied by lightning. Or maybe you don't generally speak in nature metaphors.
The two artists are good in entirely different ways. The same instruments are involved, but if Chloe March's piano is a rain shower, Kristeen Young's is like a mallet. Her drums are more inclined to thunder than to drizzle. Chloe's voice is part of the soundscape: sometimes muted, sometimes harmonized, sometimes in polyphony. Kristeen has two voices: a standard rock voice, and then something that sounds like what would happen if the Ethereal Female Vocalist from insert-your-electronic-project-here grabbed a flamethrower and started a riot.
Or take the lyrics. Chloe's titles are about rain, spring, and Anne Boleyn. They're spun from fairy tales and fantasy. Kristeen Young's titles are more along the lines of Music for Strippers, Hookers and the Odd On-Looker. The big single from her last album called for the grisly deaths of about a dozen classic rock legends ("Push Prince off his heels.... Strangle Bowie with his neckerchief.... Punch holes in the Beatles' yellow boat....")
And then there's "The Depression Contest." Musically, it's more raucous than anything off The Orphans, which until now I didn't really think possible. If you play this at a volume below, oh, 25, you're missing the point entirely. This is loud music and should be played loud.
Listen here.
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