Dayna Kurtz

My exposure to Dayna Kurtz was one of those delightful, miraculous, unscripted and unexpected results of chance. My wife had heard that Richie Havens was playing at a lovely little venue in Harrisonburg, Virginia where her (that is, my wife’s) family lives, so we scooped up tickets immediately and brought friends. This is because nobody should die without having seen Richie Havens live. We’d seen him a couple times before, and you always leave his show positive and inspired. It turned out that he had Dayna opening for him during that tour. I’ll be frank, Dayna blew me away that night. Her deep, smoky voice, her emotionally-charged lyrics, and her cathartic, passionate delivery combine to get inside your head, and once you hear it, especially if you see her performing live, you’ll wonder why you haven’t heard of her before. Dayna’s website is http://www.daynakurtz.com and she’s also on MySpace.

Otherwise Luscious Life was released in 1997, went out of print, and then was reissued in 2002. This is a live album which contains some of the same songs as Postcards, in sparse arrangements, just Dayna and her guitar and voice. I really like this version of Miss Liberty. Hell, I really like it all. Something about taking away the instrumentation and production brings her soul to the surface.

Postcards from Downtown is from 2002. Standouts include Miss Liberty (”Go plant your flags and make your promise to my promised land, and we’ll make love to the new frontier in the hot beach sand, you’ll hold me like a drowning man, you’ll come at me too human and then drag me down again…”), Postcards from Downtown (”Red light, green light, one two three, have you come to conquer me?”), Love Gets In The Way (”So come on and make a mess of me, I won’t walk away”), and Somebody Leave a Light On (with Richie Havens).

Beautiful Yesterday was released in 2004. I bought it because I saw her again at Iota in Arlington, Virginia. I thought, well, she blew me away the first time, I expect a great show, but how could it possibly match that first one? Boy was I wrong. She did the amazing cover of Prince’s somewhat obscure “Joy in Repetition” heard on this album. I was about fifteen feet from her, and I experienced an amplification of the original feeling. Prince is a god. This might be the sexiest song ever written, and boy, she does it justice! It probably helped that I had never heard the original. I went back later and listened to the original, and I have to confess, I like Dayna’s version better. There’s also a nice version of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” here.

Another Black Feather is her most recent release, from 2006. The standout cuts here are Venezuela, a delicious romantic portrait of a love that could never be, and Nola, a love song about New Orleans. This release is lyrically mature, and leaves you longing for the next one. It’s obvious that Dayna has a lot of beautiful life experiences to draw on as she paints these rich, aural portraits for you. My personal recommendation is that you pick up ALL of these releases, and go see her live. She might even still be doing house concerts. If you’re the house concert kind, grab her up when she’s in your region, and tell all your music-lover friends. Nobody will leave disappointed.

Author: listener | Category: Folk, Indie, Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Azure Ray - Azure Ray, and Burn and Shiver

Since my first listen of the first track, “Sleep,” on this 2001 album, I’ve been convinced that Azure Ray is a dangerous drug. The haunting, deceptively simple dreampop and slurred, breathy vocals of Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor call out to you like the fairies in the garden, and before you know it you’ve skipped out on your responsibilities and are just laying there in your bed with your headphones on, listening again and again and again. They will make you think about the things you lost in your life, without offering any resolution. In “Don’t Make a Sound,” they really drive it home. “The sun is out, but happiness only reminds you of the people you hurt, mistakes that you made when you were down.” It’s like the whole album is about crushing, paralyzing depression. In “Rise,” they caution you against trying to fix them. “Hey, look how low I’ve sunk, don’t ask me to rise, I’ll lose you when I’m high.” The musical accents are simply the perfect backdrop for the lyrical and vocal style and content of the material.

Burn and Shiver, released just fifteen months later, is similar in content and style, though the musical backdrop has evolved a bit, adding more sophisticated accents and strings where they fit perfectly. The first cut, Favorite Cities, cements it. “So it’s gray, so are my favorite cities…” In “Seven Days” they show their lyrical skills. “And here to read the future, but forced to breathe out the past, and too many conversations to uncover what was purposefully lost.” In “A Thousand Years,” the singer reveals a sense of oneness with the universe as she sings about breathing in all the words ever spoken. “As i’m walking, i know i’m not breathing, i’m not breathing only air. It’s filled with words once spoken by people everywhere, And i can hear all the whispers that have lived a thousand years. It just took me being open for them to reach my eager ears.”

Author: listener | Category: Indie, Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Feist - The Reminder

Reminder indeed. From the first listen of the first cut (So Sorry) you wonder who’s writing her lyrics, they’re so on target. “We’re so helpless, we’re slaves to our impulses, we’re afraid of our emotions, and no one knows where the shore is, we’re divided by the oceans.” Sparse arrangements here, so that her accomplished voice can ring out. Feel It All is an 80’s rocker musically but with more. The Park is as sparse as it gets, appropriately with its themes of distance and longing. The Water is sparse and powerful. “Telegraph cables hung and few can decipher who the message is from, and delivering quietly, cause some don’t get much company.” Past In Present is another 80s rocker. Honey Honey starts as a chant over vocal train whistles, and retains its hypnotic feel as it grows. This will go down as a great release.

Listen (naked) now:

Author: listener | Category: Indie, Music Reviews | Comments(0) June 2007

Ani DiFranco - Knuckle Down and Reprieve

Knuckle Down features some stellar cuts. For me, each release of Ani’s has eclipsed the one before. Knuckle Down is no exception. In this 2005 release, she makes you believe she’s singing right to you, especially in the final cut, Recoil (sampled below). Seeing Eye Dog is pretty fantastic, Ani-style power blues ballad.

Reprieve, the 2006 followup, she moves from that dark, breathy thing she’s done sometimes for the past couple of years in Nicotine (sampled below) to the timely anger of Millenium Theatre, superbly executed.

Author: listener | Category: Folk, Indie, Music Reviews | Comments(1) June 2007

Cat Power - The Greatest

When I first Chan’s earlier releases, I thought, if she lives long enough, she will be a great force in new music. With this release, it seems she’s going to live long enough. I’m one of the twelve people who watched her Trees video all the way through. That was her, out among the trees, from a distance, performing a whole lot of songs unaccompanied. At the time it may have been the most unusual music video ever made. This is very different. She’s teamed up with a bunch of fantastic musicians, as if it were an experiment to fill the empty spaces in her song with musical maturity and round it out a bit. I generally prefer singer-songwriters’ sparser arrangements to the full instrumentation, but in her case the extra instruments don’t take away from her voice. How could they? If anything she comes out more confident and forceful than ever before.

Listen (naked) now:

Author: listener | Category: Indie, Music Reviews | Comments(0) May 2007