Really pretty good album from an artist who would have been part of the freak folk nation a few years ago (she's recorded with another band on Greg Weeks' Language of Stone imprint), but now seems to be mostly on her own. Witchy, spooky, lovely stuff, though.
SONDRA SUN-ODEON
Aethera
(self-released)
There's a wildness in Sondra Sun-Odeon's altered folk, a sense not of home-y hedgerows and kitchen gardens but salty, windblown shores. It starts in her flickery voice, now a soft, shy murmur, now an in-drawn octave-leaping breath, now a raw bird-like cry cutting through the mix. This is Sun-Odeon's first solo album, following an album and an EP with Silver Summit, a Brooklyn psych-folk duo she shares with David Shawn Bosler. (A second Silver Summit album is apparently in the works.)
Sun-Odeon is not too tethered to traditional melody. Instead, she slices in and out of a tumultuous backing. All the elements of her songs -- throbs of cello (that's Espers' Helena Espvall), tremulous vibrations of violin and viola (that's Carla Bozulich collaborator Lenya Marika Papach, crashes and bumps of percussion (Ben McConnell) and her remarkable voice - seem to career in from the edges, meeting in the middle in a tangled urgency. Unlike Espers, which makes a space within ordered parameters for wildness (as in the guitar break midway through "Flaming Telepaths"), Sun-Odeon thrives in keening disorder. There's something feral, something unpremeditated about the way she darts and swoops through the guitar-strummed architectures of her songs.
There's a streaming song here, but I can't figure out how to embed it.
Showing posts with label Helena Espvall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Helena Espvall. Show all posts
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Catching up on my Blurt stuff
My not entirely positive review of David Berman’s graphic book, The Portable February
My take on Choir of Young Believers’ This Is For the White In Your Eyes
“Not exactly a choir, but rather like one angelic voice defines this Danish orchestral pop project. The voice belongs to Jannis Noya Makrigiannis, once the guitar player for synth-poppy Lake Placid, now part of experimental psych outfit Mit Nye Band. But even if you're a habitué of Copenhagen's indie rock scene, those names will hardly prepare you for Choir of Young Believers. Think instead of the fragile soul-stirring of Talk Talk's quiet moments blowing up somehow into giant Coldplay-ish pop triumphs. Through it all, there is that voice, cool in tone, fluttery with feeling, embellished at times with blue-eyed soul slides and flourishes and at others cutting through masses of strings with the high, melodically charged certainty of an indie Roy Orbison.”
"Action Reaction"
A review of the second collaboration between Helena Espvall of Espers and Masaki Batoh of Ghost. It’s called Overloaded Ark.
“A year ago, the self-titled collaboration between Espers' Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh looked a lot like mom, bucolically serene, folk-centric and gentle. Now little brother Overloaded Ark comes along and rights the balance, bearing a stronger resemblance to Ghost's impish rhythmic gambols and tending more towards unstructured, unvocaled free improvisations than songs.”
“Suenos Con Serpientes”
My take on Choir of Young Believers’ This Is For the White In Your Eyes
“Not exactly a choir, but rather like one angelic voice defines this Danish orchestral pop project. The voice belongs to Jannis Noya Makrigiannis, once the guitar player for synth-poppy Lake Placid, now part of experimental psych outfit Mit Nye Band. But even if you're a habitué of Copenhagen's indie rock scene, those names will hardly prepare you for Choir of Young Believers. Think instead of the fragile soul-stirring of Talk Talk's quiet moments blowing up somehow into giant Coldplay-ish pop triumphs. Through it all, there is that voice, cool in tone, fluttery with feeling, embellished at times with blue-eyed soul slides and flourishes and at others cutting through masses of strings with the high, melodically charged certainty of an indie Roy Orbison.”
"Action Reaction"
A review of the second collaboration between Helena Espvall of Espers and Masaki Batoh of Ghost. It’s called Overloaded Ark.
“A year ago, the self-titled collaboration between Espers' Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh looked a lot like mom, bucolically serene, folk-centric and gentle. Now little brother Overloaded Ark comes along and rights the balance, bearing a stronger resemblance to Ghost's impish rhythmic gambols and tending more towards unstructured, unvocaled free improvisations than songs.”
“Suenos Con Serpientes”
Friday, March 6, 2009
Psych folk super-duo’s eerie drones
I've got another of those PopMatters blog posts to share with you all...
Anahita "a new collaboration between Espers cellist Helena Espvall and Fursaxa’s Tara Burke, a fragile, unearthly combination of female life forces that takes shape in floating vocals, plinking strings and Middle Eastern tonalities."
"Pirin Planina"
"Chalice of Cypress"
"Velvet Shoon"
Anahita "a new collaboration between Espers cellist Helena Espvall and Fursaxa’s Tara Burke, a fragile, unearthly combination of female life forces that takes shape in floating vocals, plinking strings and Middle Eastern tonalities."
"Pirin Planina"
"Chalice of Cypress"
"Velvet Shoon"
Friday, September 12, 2008
Silver Jews, Oneida and Espvall Batoh
Yesterday was jackpot day at blurt-online.com...with a whole bunch of miscellania, some of it pretty vintage, showing up on the site. The big thing, though, and the piece most likely to get missed by everyone, is this review of last week's Silver Jews show.
Silver Jews + Mike Flood 9-4-08
Iron Horse · Northampton, MA
By JENNIFER KELLY
Tonight's the night when traditional forms -- folk, country, protest, blues -- get truly weird. Silver Jews' David Berman says he gets nervous when he songs seem a little too straightforward and right away has to do something to twist them around a little. Opener Mike Flood probably never has that problem. His stuff starts out left of center and goes over the hills and far away from there.
Flood is onstage when I arrive, a skinny, close-shorn guy in a camo hat, looking a little like Ed Harris gone feral. He's a local fixture from back in the days when Northampton was supposed to be the next Seattle. The final track on Sebadoh's Bubble & Scrape bears his name, and when he admits that his first attempts at songwriting were mostly to "figure out what Gaff" was up to, he's talking about Erik Gaffney. He also does a fairly wicked imitation of Lou Barlow mid-set, taking his Guthrie-vintage staccato strum way up high and dissonant, so that his guitar all the sudden sounds like something off an old Shrimper cassette. Inside humor, but funny.
Go to Blurt.com for the rest
"Strange Victory, Strange Defeat"
And a couple of short-ish reviews, also from Blurt.
Oneida
Preteen Weaponry
(Jagjaguwar)
www.jagjaguwar.com
Oneida's last two albums, The Wedding and Happy New Year, were unusually subdued and song structured, a far cry from the band's pummeling, mind-bending live show. Now with Preteen Weaponry, reportedly the first of three linked records, Oneida lets its krautrocking, freak flags fly with three extended meditations on rhythm, repetition and drone. "Part One" dives deep into cool tones, its rattling, clattering drums subordinate to Tortoise-y, laid back guitar. "Part Two," the only cut with vocals, is classic long-form Oneida, Kid Millions hammering out slow, ritual drums against firestorms of feedback, ghostly chants buried under undulating walls of tone. All three cuts circle relentlessly around reiterated ideas, intermittently transforming repetition into revelation.
The problem: though repetition occasionally leads to satori, there are times when you just want it to stop. As such, Preteen Weaponry is far too difficult to expand the circle of O-lovers much, but still essential for the hardcore fellow travelers.
Standout tracks: "Part Two", "Part One" JENNIFER KELLY
"Preteen Weaponry"
Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh
Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh
(Drag City)
www.dragcity.com
Folk music is normally shaped, even defined, by sense of place. So, what to make of this geographically indeterminant collaboration of Espers' Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh, which draws from traditions as distinct as Scandinavian sea songs, Japanese traditional music, American blues, Celtic laments and free-jazz improvisation? Beginning in "Polska"'s throbbing, cymbal-clashing skirl, and winding through mournful modal melodies and sorrowful baroque flourishes, these songs seem to exist outside time and place, in a misty, mythical world. Espvall presides over the Nordic melodies of her girlhood, while Masaki adds Ghost-ly experimentation and effects. The one for the mix tape, though, is "Death Letter," a Son House cover lent otherworldly sheen with wild swathes of cello and weirdly reverbed vocals.
A member of the No Neck Blues Band once insisted to me that every country, every culture has a blues, whether it follows the standard 12-bar progressions or not. This sounds like the blues of a place that maybe only existed in imagination, at least until it was laid to tape here.
Standout Tracks: "Death Letter," "Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa" JENNIFER KELLY
Here they are at Terrastock 7
Silver Jews + Mike Flood 9-4-08
Iron Horse · Northampton, MA
By JENNIFER KELLY
Tonight's the night when traditional forms -- folk, country, protest, blues -- get truly weird. Silver Jews' David Berman says he gets nervous when he songs seem a little too straightforward and right away has to do something to twist them around a little. Opener Mike Flood probably never has that problem. His stuff starts out left of center and goes over the hills and far away from there.
Flood is onstage when I arrive, a skinny, close-shorn guy in a camo hat, looking a little like Ed Harris gone feral. He's a local fixture from back in the days when Northampton was supposed to be the next Seattle. The final track on Sebadoh's Bubble & Scrape bears his name, and when he admits that his first attempts at songwriting were mostly to "figure out what Gaff" was up to, he's talking about Erik Gaffney. He also does a fairly wicked imitation of Lou Barlow mid-set, taking his Guthrie-vintage staccato strum way up high and dissonant, so that his guitar all the sudden sounds like something off an old Shrimper cassette. Inside humor, but funny.
Go to Blurt.com for the rest
"Strange Victory, Strange Defeat"
And a couple of short-ish reviews, also from Blurt.
Oneida
Preteen Weaponry
(Jagjaguwar)
www.jagjaguwar.com
Oneida's last two albums, The Wedding and Happy New Year, were unusually subdued and song structured, a far cry from the band's pummeling, mind-bending live show. Now with Preteen Weaponry, reportedly the first of three linked records, Oneida lets its krautrocking, freak flags fly with three extended meditations on rhythm, repetition and drone. "Part One" dives deep into cool tones, its rattling, clattering drums subordinate to Tortoise-y, laid back guitar. "Part Two," the only cut with vocals, is classic long-form Oneida, Kid Millions hammering out slow, ritual drums against firestorms of feedback, ghostly chants buried under undulating walls of tone. All three cuts circle relentlessly around reiterated ideas, intermittently transforming repetition into revelation.
The problem: though repetition occasionally leads to satori, there are times when you just want it to stop. As such, Preteen Weaponry is far too difficult to expand the circle of O-lovers much, but still essential for the hardcore fellow travelers.
Standout tracks: "Part Two", "Part One" JENNIFER KELLY
"Preteen Weaponry"
Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh
Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh
(Drag City)
www.dragcity.com
Folk music is normally shaped, even defined, by sense of place. So, what to make of this geographically indeterminant collaboration of Espers' Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh, which draws from traditions as distinct as Scandinavian sea songs, Japanese traditional music, American blues, Celtic laments and free-jazz improvisation? Beginning in "Polska"'s throbbing, cymbal-clashing skirl, and winding through mournful modal melodies and sorrowful baroque flourishes, these songs seem to exist outside time and place, in a misty, mythical world. Espvall presides over the Nordic melodies of her girlhood, while Masaki adds Ghost-ly experimentation and effects. The one for the mix tape, though, is "Death Letter," a Son House cover lent otherworldly sheen with wild swathes of cello and weirdly reverbed vocals.
A member of the No Neck Blues Band once insisted to me that every country, every culture has a blues, whether it follows the standard 12-bar progressions or not. This sounds like the blues of a place that maybe only existed in imagination, at least until it was laid to tape here.
Standout Tracks: "Death Letter," "Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa" JENNIFER KELLY
Here they are at Terrastock 7
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