On 04.20.10, In Live Shows, By Audrey Culver
On 03.18.10, In Live Shows, By Audrey Culver
This will be a very special stripped-down set. Sidewalk Cafe only holds some 50-60 people, so show up early as to not miss this intimate appearance!
Plus… it’s FREE!
On 03.09.10, In Live Shows, By Audrey Culver
poster © 2010 twisted heArt (http://twistedheart.tumblr.com/)
On 01.09.10, In Amazing Albums, By Audrey Culver
The history of dioramas is steeped in theatre, drama, and storytelling, so it is only fitting that the new album by Brooklyn-based musician, Hailey Wojcik, is called just that. The eleven tracks that comprise the self-released, “Diorama,” are each their own little three-dimensional story, filled with vivid imagery and a cast of characters full of angst and jealousy and chaos and misfortune and separation, yet through the talent of Ms. Wojcik’s gifts, are told with humor and irony and a playfulness that shines with clever, often literary, wordplay and unexpected pointedness.
Masterfully produced by Drawing Number One’s Dan Romer (Ingrid Michaelson, Jenny Owen Youngs, Bess Rogers), each song has a slightly different feel, whether country-tinged (“Samsa Morning,” “Model Aeroplane”), Atari-blipped electronica (“Raised in a Zoo”), dark drum-and-synth laden moodiness (“Pumpkinteeth”), catchy guitar-based pop (“Imaginary Friends with Benefits”), quirky indie pop (“Amnesia”) or more straight-forward pop (“Anglerfish”). Despite the variety of sounds and moods and stories, however, the single, unifying, and most satisfying aspect of the album is Ms. Wojcik voice. With skills obviously honed over many years, she clearly recognizes the importance of using her voice as its own instrument, and is capable of a full range of expressions depending on the story she is telling.
My initial introduction to Ms. Wojcik’s music was through her video to “Pumpkinteeth,” a song I completely loved from the outset. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was how much I would love the rest of the album even more than that song. After close to two dozen listens, “Diorama” continues to reveal itself and still surprises. The three stand-out tracks for me, personally, are the one-two-three punch of “Anglerfish,” “Amnesia,” and “Raised in a Zoo.” And just the fact that those are tracks 7, 8 and 9 shows how solid the album is throughout.
A subversive, literary songstress and gifted storyteller, Wojcik’s “Diorama” is like slapping a guitar around Regina Spektor’s neck and throwing her in a blender to bloody her up a little bit– all with a tongue placed firmly in cheek. The result? A calling-card of an album that announces a new star of the indie music scene.
TRACK-BY-TRACK BREAKDOWN:
1. Holden Caulfield – Coming right out of the gate displaying her expressive, sometimes gritty, punk-influenced vocals that yearn and plead, Ms. Wojcik introduces us not only to her skilled guitar work with the song’s insistent, bass-heavy chords, her literary references begin, as well. The song’s title is derived from the protagonist in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. “You made me feel like Holden Caulfield, and you acted like such a phony. Still, I wish you’d phone me. Phone me.”
2. Luck – Ms. Wojcik immediately slows it down with the mid-tempo and much more light-hearted pop gem, “Luck,” where she plays her 3-stringed strumstick while accompanied softly by a tuba, trumpet and accordian. Here, she’s a luck-seeking whisker collector, trying to strike it rich only to realize her efforts are in vain.
3. Samsa Morning – Her knack for rhymes and wordplay come right into the forefront on this second song whose title references a work of literature, Gregor Samsa being the character who transforms from a salesman to an insect in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The opening lines of the song say it all: “My idiotic, vapid, pathological crush on you is masochistic– massively unrealistic, too.” Its off-kilter lyrics about nightmares juxtapose the fun, ’50s doo-wop touch of “shoo bops” during the chorus. It’s an absolute pleasure to behold.
4. Pumpkinteeth – Pulsing drums and unsettling, distorted keyboards begin this song, which sounds like nothing else on the album. Like a grimier, dirtier Bat for Lashes, the vibe is undeniably addictive. The vocals start with one of the very best opening lines of any song in recent memory, “I don’t know how many mushrooms I’d have to eat to find you attractive. I don’t know, what does your Saturday look like? Let’s find out.” Brilliant. This is a song that can haunt even your most pleasant, sunny, summer days. It’s infinitely spooky and endlessly delicious.
5. Good Friday – Immediately following up an intense horror story of a song with the jubilant, poppy “Good Friday” takes an enormous amount of talent and confidence and Ms. Wojcik pulls it off beautifully. With a tone reminiscent of The Cure’s “Catch,” which on their “Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me” album also followed an intensely dark song (“Kiss”), “Good Friday” is fun and light with a wonderfully memorable pop hook.
6. Imaginary Friends with Benefits – Just the title alone reveals so much about Ms. Wojcik’s sensibilities. An upbeat, sing-a-long, clap-along type of electric guitar-based ditty with a foot deeply ensconcend in a 1950s vibe, the musical happiness is juxtaposed, lyrically, by a story of emotional vacancy.
7. Anglerfish – By far my favorite song on the album, it is also the most straight-forward pop song and would fit nicely on indie/college radio. Here, she matches a brilliant pop hook with masterful storytelling about a lover who has left her for another. Playful marimbas compliment her vengeful lyrics, which are delightfully evil: “I hope he gives you syphilis and you don’t notice it until it creeps into your brain. Then, which one of us would be insane?” Then during the song’s breakdown, she trumps that with, “When I hope you think of me, and think, ‘Boy, I really fucked up. Man, I really miss her.’ Then, when you go home to him, I hope that you walk in on him fucking your sister.” La di da di da…
8. Amnesia – Probably the most radio-friendly song on the album, musically and lyrically, its absurdity is charming– it’s like “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” meets “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” The 3/4 time signature and fun ukelele propel the song forward as she sings, “Let’s get hit over the head, just not so hard that we’re dead, but so hard we forget all the things that we said and we haven’t said yet.” This is clearly another indie/college hit-in-waiting.
9. Raised in a Zoo – Another track that sounds like nothing else on the album, this song, full of Atari-era computer bleeps, ’80s Dr. Rhythm hand claps and drum programming, random animal sounds, and even the insistent buzz of summer insects, is unquestionably the most fun and effervescent track on “Diorama.” Here, Ms. Wojcik sings about being raised as an only child in a zoo and, therefore, being incapable of finding a true connection with another human being. “I wasn’t raised among you. I wasn’t raised to love you. I was raised in a zoo. So, I won’t be coming to your party, but it was sure nice of you to invite me ’cause I have noticed a certain tendency of people to stick within their own species…”
10. 6th Ave – Admittedly not the most accessible song on the album, it took longer for this track to grow on me than the others. It was the story of the song that finally got me, though, as she tells about dreaming of being hit by a taxi and how wonderful it would be to float above it all after the impact. Touching again on her sense of isolation, she finds solace inside the taxi in the company of a stranger.
11. Model Aeroplane – This duet with, and co-written by, Tesco Vee of punk band, the Meatmen, takes country love duets and throws them completely off a cliff. Musically, it’s a straight-forward country song from the Johnny Cash playbook with a splash of south of the border Tejano (ala Cash’s “Ring of Fire”), but lyrically it’s sung by two ex-lovers who despise each other so utterly, so thoroughly, so completely that they want to hurt, maim or kill one another with vigor. “Made a deal with the devil, so I could watch you rot in hell. He said angelic females still burn so very well. He conjured, belched and bellowed as he stoked your funeral pyre, and crushed you into pill form and washed you down with fire.” Nice.
“Diorama” is available on iTunes, CD Baby and Amazon, and I cannot recommend this album highly enough. It is one of my Top 10 Albums of 2009 and, if you haven’t heard it yet, once you do, it will surely be one of your favorite albums of 2010.
“Anglerfish” by Hailey Wojcik
On 11.15.09, In Amazing Albums, By Audrey Culver
It’s no secret that the Brooklyn music scene is abounding with abundantly talented musicians. One of the benefits of seeing live music in New York is that on any given night, one of the openers for a more well-established act will be a true artist on the rise. I have learned of so many excellent bands that way, including The Dig, Nouvellas, The Antlers, The Living Kills and The Bloodsugars. Most recently, I stumbled across an immensely talented singer/songwriter in Sharon Van Etten when she opened for London’s Noah and the Whale on the final night of their three-night residency at the Mercury Lounge.
Playing to a small crowd on that early Wednesday evening, she immediately drew me in with her angelic, almost operatic voice, and slow, deliberate, aching songs about the intricacies of love. With a charming stage presence completely void of any pretense, a unique sense of song structure, and the lyrics of a poet, it was without question that I knew I had to purchase her CD, “Because I Was In Love.”
Taking what she did on stage to a whole other level, the eleven tracks on the CD simmered and stewed and slowly got under my skin. Ms. Van Etten has a keen ability to write a melody that seems, at first, to be somewhat nondescript in its subtlety, but it’s that delicacy that enchants the senses upon repeated listens. Soft nuance slowly gives way to layers of intricacy as her graceful harmonies ache and yearn.
Lyrically, her songs all deal with conditions of the heart and the complex bittersweetness that often accompanies the feelings of love. Like the best lyricists, she is able to convey a mood, a thought, a feeling through an economy of words. A fine example of this is the opening lines of “Consolation Prize.” In a simple couplet, she’s able to tell a complete backstory of a relationship: “I came to you, my conscience clean, blood on my knees. The moral of the story is, don’t walk away again.”
She is also adept at conveying a tone through more ambiguous wordplay. In “Keep,” very subtilely she gives hints of a relationship that’s nearing the tipping point of self-destruction as it’s filled with lies and doubts, but also love and hope. “Remember these moments, they’re all we have and all I can keep. Caught in a lie, I want you to keep me to yourself. Keep running deep under my skin I want to shed. Don’t keep it in. Keep it on the thinnest of all threads and I won’t break you, no, no.”
My favorite lyric, though, probably because it taps into my own sense of romanticism, is from “Much More Than That.” Here, she recognizes that the most simple gesture can mean more than any words could ever say, “You reached for my hand slowly. I didn’t pull away. We did not have to be lips to face. My toe hit your toe lightly, your toe met my heel right back, and I don’t think I need much more than that.”
Ms. Van Etten writes songs from the perspective of someone who has been in love and who recognizes the beauty and pain of that experience. As the feelings of love ebb and flow along the waves of its wonders and difficulties, its apparent that she retains an unflinching hope that one day true love will flourish and last a lifetime, if not forever.
For this blog, one of the biggest challenges in deciding what track best represents Ms. Van Etten’s gifts as an artist was realizing that every track on “Because I Was In Love” holds its own distinctive take on her arsenal of talent. But, I have chosen the final track on the album, “Holding Out” for a multitude of reasons.
Perhaps it’s because it’s track 11:11, so it naturally drew me in, or perhaps it’s because it ends the album with a message so simple, yet so true, that it left me with tears in my eyes. Although it doesn’t feature any of her lovely harmonies, it does showcase her beautiful voice and propensity for song structure. It starts out as if it will be a more upbeat song, but suddenly shifts gears and slows down at the two-minute mark. That shift allows the song to breathe, Ms. Van Etten to emote, and us all to hope just as she hopes. Becoming almost an a cappella offering, the final four minutes find her drawing us in and leaving us with her lone voice and her lone, sparse guitar, plucking at strings– heartstrings perhaps– as she sings of holding out for a perfect love. Holding out, holding out…
And we’re there, holding out right along with her.
“Holding Out” by Sharon Van Etten
MP3: “Holding Out”