You all knew this was coming, so there’s no sense keeping it for the end of the list. Lenni et al’s new CD departs a bit from the sound of their more recent independent releases and live performances, evolving the music into something I can only describe as filmic. They’ve included more instrumental pieces than they’d play in concert—Rosa Dances In Her Kitchen in particular is wonderfully evocative—and added a range of new ideas, including vocal effects, that make Les Dangereuses a Third Floor experience unlike anything I’ve heard from them before. It’s exactly, but also not at all, what I expected. (Full disclosure: Lenni’s a dear friend, and I helped sponsor the CD.)
Angie’s got a unique vocal style that perfectly matches her personal lyrics: both are quirky yet often powerful. Paint is a great complement to her previous release, Circumstantial Overload. There’s a lot of great music on the disc, and I think Take Me Home distills it all better than I could hope to describe.
OK, Kristin’s CD was actually released a couple of years ago, at which point I wrote (but then took back) some not-entirely-complimentary things about it. I’ve gained a new appreciation for the disc—and for Ms Sweetland in general—since then, and she’s been a highlight of my listening and concertgoing in the past year.
I had the honour of seeing William Hutt on the last night of his final stage performance, playing Prospero in The Tempest. Are there any more fitting lines to close fifty years at the festival than these: But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please….
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
An EP release in advance of her first full-length CD, Amoraphobe is a nice introduction to Harmony’s distinctive phrasing and phrases. I’m a sucker for clever imagery, and I find her lyrics—like woop! go the v-birds, from Nothing Runs Like a Deer—stick in my head for hours.
