Orfeo ed Euridice
The pros and cons of the affected voice of Joanna Newsom have been playing out before me in a manner no more or less spectacular than the 1987 USSR vs. Canada Junior hockey fight (link). It's epic, unpleasant and occasionally somebody at the top makes the call to kill the lights in a desperate grasp for order.
Anni Rossi - Live in Portland
My underlying sentiment is praise and thankfulness. Anni Rossi is a wonderful song writer and performer and is part of a greater movement of good music - sometimes performed solo by girls who sometimes have a tinge of a strangely affected vocal style. In each case, they have managed to find their own voice seeded from a rich garden of great female singers. Furthermore, the use of instruments other than guitar within the female signer/song writer deserves to be directly credited to Newsom.
A few exceptions have cropped up, in particular a fairly bad performance by Casey Dienel, who managed to avoid translating her shot at a trendy vocal stab wound onto any recordings.
However, a recent trip to Pheonix, Arizona's amazing Trunk Space reveled how deep the river runs. 13 bands were on the bill and a significant amount twisted annunciation was brought to the stage.
Ash Reiter/Drunken Boat - Song 1
I was quite taken with a performance by Ash Reiter. The songs were quite simple in a perfect ex-Eric's Trip sort of way. I was also intrigued by what I thought was an Australian accent. Further investigation revealed that she was from the Bay area.
This intrigue and disgust, admiration and distrust and praise and dismissal took it's most violent form with a Riverside auteur Brother Mitya (see: flesh eaters). His set was a great mix of meticulous classical guitar and minimalist percussion. The Trunk Space was easily raptured. But the skew of his mouth and the utter forcefulness of vocal defocussing was just too much. I walked away satisfied, filled with great music but totally unable to buy his CD, hateful and unnecessarily bitter.
Ultimately, my emotions are dominated by 'start more bands'. I prefer 'steal freely' to 'ripping off'. I have even made the argument that a top 40 cover band is possibly the punkest band of all time (this argument is too shambly to be put to paper, but holds up quite well at parties). But a significant part of singing a song is finding your own voice. Erika Davies is a great San Diego singer/seamstress who can sing through the most predictable repertoire of all time with a lilt that makes it alright by me.
Erika Davies - Summertime
Anni Rossi - Live in Portland
My underlying sentiment is praise and thankfulness. Anni Rossi is a wonderful song writer and performer and is part of a greater movement of good music - sometimes performed solo by girls who sometimes have a tinge of a strangely affected vocal style. In each case, they have managed to find their own voice seeded from a rich garden of great female singers. Furthermore, the use of instruments other than guitar within the female signer/song writer deserves to be directly credited to Newsom.
A few exceptions have cropped up, in particular a fairly bad performance by Casey Dienel, who managed to avoid translating her shot at a trendy vocal stab wound onto any recordings.
However, a recent trip to Pheonix, Arizona's amazing Trunk Space reveled how deep the river runs. 13 bands were on the bill and a significant amount twisted annunciation was brought to the stage.
Ash Reiter/Drunken Boat - Song 1
I was quite taken with a performance by Ash Reiter. The songs were quite simple in a perfect ex-Eric's Trip sort of way. I was also intrigued by what I thought was an Australian accent. Further investigation revealed that she was from the Bay area.
This intrigue and disgust, admiration and distrust and praise and dismissal took it's most violent form with a Riverside auteur Brother Mitya (see: flesh eaters). His set was a great mix of meticulous classical guitar and minimalist percussion. The Trunk Space was easily raptured. But the skew of his mouth and the utter forcefulness of vocal defocussing was just too much. I walked away satisfied, filled with great music but totally unable to buy his CD, hateful and unnecessarily bitter.
Ultimately, my emotions are dominated by 'start more bands'. I prefer 'steal freely' to 'ripping off'. I have even made the argument that a top 40 cover band is possibly the punkest band of all time (this argument is too shambly to be put to paper, but holds up quite well at parties). But a significant part of singing a song is finding your own voice. Erika Davies is a great San Diego singer/seamstress who can sing through the most predictable repertoire of all time with a lilt that makes it alright by me.
Erika Davies - Summertime
posted by david b at 4:29 PM
2 Comments:
I think in a lot of ways, it's the discussion of female songwriters as "female songwriters" that is what gets in the way of people being able to enjoy them. This is a discussion you never see with male songwriters. It seems especially ridiculous to pinpoint women with unique voices or instrumentation to joanna newsom. What about karen dalton? elisabeth cotton? billie holiday? ruth brown? ma rainey? What about melanie safka, laura nyro, or joni mitchell? those women i think all possess singular voices...my point is that I don't think that 'uniqueness' in music is due to joanna newsom or gender or, a concerted effort to be "quirky."
if it would make you feel better, i can do a post about how eddy vedder was the most influential singer of the 90s and how everyone thought the first stone temple pilots single was actually a pearl jam cover.
instead this is about how tons of girls have been inspired by/ripped off joanna newsom which is a blessing/curse.
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