Across the Universe Genre-Benders
and a New Breed of Singer-Songwriters
It’s the final and finest countdown of a painstaking selection of female musicians who made an incredible impact in that ever-growing adeline-sweet and blues-drawl deep tower of song Leonard Cohen writes about so eloquently. This’ll be a long one, but well worth the look-see. We’ll check out the amazing genre-benders like Janelle Monae and Laurie Anderson; and those damn, I mean damn amazing creations of a new breed of singer-songwriters. Without further ado, let’s have a look-see at these ladies.
Across the Universe Genre-Bending Geniuses
Joanna Newsom
Words are certainly spilling lyrical and stern and utterly unlike anything else you’ll ever hear again. Sound indescribable and mesmerizing swimming back to you, rain of hypnotic and startling and disparate power falling up from like endless and amazing rain inside paper cups. From the sweetest and absolutely heavenly worlds of Joanna Newsom’s evanescent voice and seraphic harp chords to the banging, beating, five-year-old-and-wise-sounding storm of Marnie Stern to the rising star of Janelle Monae’s Archandroid, these albums are disparate in sound but not in spirit. Get ready to be hit on the head in the best way and imagine the Monty Python show preparing you for it. “And now,” John Cleese says, “for something completely different.” For realz. There may be imitators. But these ladies are originators.
Words are certainly spilling lyrical and stern and utterly unlike anything else you’ll ever hear again. Sound indescribable and mesmerizing swimming back to you, rain of hypnotic and startling and disparate power falling up from like endless and amazing rain inside paper cups.
Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me (Drag City)
I will admit, right here, right now, that I did not like Joanna Newsom’s music until I heard this album. There is no point in questioning why that is. As all the world around me fawned in woozy and bewitched amazement, I just thought she was pretty and that it was cool she played the harp. I saw her live once, years ago, and I do remember being, well, drunk. But even in the hazy numbness of my spirit, I felt the noisy old bar transform itself into a house of reverence and wonder. Skip about however many years ago that was to Have One on Me, and I want to live inside the spaces of her voice. I cannot compare previous releases because I never really listened, but I hear what I think is a new fierceness and certainty in that incredibly strange and plaintive waiving wonder of her singing, in the tough and lucid dream words that happen along with such the never-shall-this-come again voice of hers. It’s almost hard to believe this woman is a human when you listen to this album, especially if you loop it all day long. When the strings come in, and that “Easy” comes upon you like an incantation from heavens you’ve been trying to avoid, you are most definitely in a world of fine fiction, fine truth, and the most frightening and comforting aspects of beauty all in a world of snow and green and sky and weightlessness. If you weren’t a Newsom fiend before, Have One on Me will convert you to the religion that this gorgeous wonder known as Joanna Newsom is fast becoming.
Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid (Bad Boy)
Janelle Monae’s ArchAndroid is a metal firecracker of musical metamorphosis, a supernova of sound—impossible to resist or ignore. From first track to last, this record is as fragmented and cohesive and well, long, as the best postmodern fiction. Though each song provokes a different place, evokes a decidedly different atmosphere, spans a David Bowie to Aretha Franklin to Diana Ross to Grace Jones to Judy Garland to Ella Fitzgerald spectrum, Monae swings between worlds incredible, infectious, danceable, sweet, slow, vulnerable and fierce with the precise dexterity and skill of a fearless acrobat, making a record most deserving of its endless accolades. ArchAndroid has turned musical history on its head, stands on its own as an instant classic, and is easily the most exciting record of 2010. Favorite tracks of the moment: the whole album, really, is a necessity, but “Tightrope”, “Sir Greendown”, “Cold War”, “Oh Maker” and “Make the Bus” not only kick serious ass but provide a perfect taste of this firecracker’s astounding talent and this astounding album’s diversity of soundstyling.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, IRM
With Beck mastering the production, electronic beats, African drums, swimming strings and lush French chansons a la her papa Serge, Charlotte’s sexy whispers and snappy near-Nico vocal stylings all merge into a slow burn of absolute perfection. The ideal dinner party album, IRM is beautiful work of art—completely original, powerful, unexpected and addictive—a lovely soundscape to blend beneath the chatter of conversations and a complete revelation of personal confession and contemplation when listened to alone, preferably with a tasty café au lait at the golden hours of sunrise or sunset. Favorite tracks of the moment: “Heaven Can Wait”, “Me and Jane Doe”, “Le Chat du Café des Artistes” and “Time of the Assassins.”
Laurie Anderson, Homeland (Nonesuch)
A sister Synconaut confessed–when I posted to Facebook the gorgeous the track “Bodies in Motion” from this legendary innovator’s latest work of art–that Laurie Anderson was one of her true heroes, I felt an even closer kinship with this writer, for Anderson has spoken to me my whole life and been a close-as-skin hero of mine for as long as I can remember. Her works are always of the moment and before the moment. Cosmic. Anderson combines performance art, science fiction, vocal distortions, incredible fearlessness, beautiful electric violin, keen intelligence and preternatural insight into the future and the past to make a story, a film, a painting—all out of sound—into something that feels, well, just like home. Favorite tracks: “Thinking of You”, “Bodies in Motion” and “Dark Time in the Revolution.”
Marnie Stern, Marnie Stern (Kill Rock Stars)
This woman is so much fun. Like Titus Andronicus meets Daniel Johnston meets Le Tigre and Bikini Kill. If there’s such a thing as adorable experimental folk metal, this is it. She starts the album off with a chant like a drum beat, pounding out a protest-voice directive: “Get. On. Your. Knees. Defenders. Get. On. Your. Knees. Defenders.” The drums roll without reprieve. Electric guitar solos divide into it all, creating a cacophonic-almost-math-rock wall of sound that sounds like a whole damn band. But it’s just cute blonde Marnie doing something you’ve never heard before, with music moving almost too fast to catch. “The future is your soul. Fill this part in,” she says, like an order, a necessary one. Fill this part in. She seems to be asking the listener to do just that, with all of it.
Singer-Songwriters are Not Boring
Each of these women make records that are almost utter opposites of the well-loved-by-me-and-millions folkies like Joni Mitchell and other icons like her. Storytellers all, this is a brand-new breed influenced both by folk, indie, metal, blues, gospel, punk and rock-and-roll.
Stripped down beat poet lyrics, layers of sound, and a voice that pierces right to the heart, with all the wisdom of a woman who’s done everything you’ve already dreamed of, lost it all, and brought it all home again.
Laura Veirs, July Flame
Listening to Veirs’ evocative and beautiful July Flame, you know that she didn’t need the Decemberists’ front man Colin Meloy’s declaration of this release being “the best album of 2010.” Though, of course, such a plug gives this poet of a songwriter a bit of the recognition she deserves. A summer haze covers the whole of this record, brings on beating hearts and the hope of hot months spread out forever forward. When listening to this record, you are nowhere else but here, and here is the only place you want to be. The opening song, “I Can Hear Your Tracks” is achingly beautiful and tender, just like the whole record, just like Veirs herself, telling stories you could hear over and over and over again and never once get anywhere but lost in a spell you’ll never want to leave.
Laura Marling, I Speak Because I Can
Just as plainspoken and purposeful and clear as her album title, young British Laura Marling brings on narratives of love and loss and faraway fairy tales–putting an indie-spirit spin on 1960s British folk songstresses like Sandy Denny and the gritty Americana of Will Oldham and even the sparse and meditative poetry roll of Leonard Cohen. She speaks and tells her stories for a simple reason, for the same reason the caged bird sings–no artifice here—she does it because she can.
Sharon Van Etten, Epic
The best heartbreak album of 2010, hands down. Van Etten’s voice is rich and deep, and her sorrow and humor combine somehow to make the songs all the more melancholy and wrenching. Which is not to say you won’t want to wear the grooves out on this if you haven’t already. Melancholy, I declare, is a necessity sometimes, and even maudlin can be great if you do it right, and Van Etten does this effortlessly.
Tracy Thorne, Love and Its Opposite (Merge)
I love this woman. She sings about taking off her wedding ring to hit the singles bar, waxing herself clean for the possibilities such a scene might bring, begging the question, literally, of anyone who might be looking, “Can you guess my age in this light?” This track, “Singles Bar”, is most definitely on par, in every element, with the great Tom Waits’ track “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You.” Stripped down beat poet lyrics, layers of sound, and a voice that pierces right to the heart, with all the wisdom of a woman who’s done everything you’ve already dreamed of, lost it all, and brought it all home again. And oh, yeah, she was in Everything But the Girl, which is an AWESOME band, not quite as great as Tracy on her own though. Favorite tracks: “Singles Bar”, “Late in the Afternoon”, “Oh, the Divorces” and “Hormones.”
Patty Griffin, Downtown Church
A killer among killer songwriters, Ms. Americana brings on the big guns with a rather frightening roster of luminaries (Emmy Lou Harris, for instance) to bring down the rooftops of a crumbling downtown church—stompin’ and hollerin’ and singin’ and just basically raising up the soul of anyone lucky enough to hear such a beneficent ruckus. Starting it all out we get just Patty Griffin, who doesn’t need anything but her voice to bring the heavens down on us. She prepares us for judgment day with slide-guitar and singular angelic voice, saying, “I’d rather be in a deep dark grave/And know that my fresh soul was saved/Than to live in this world in a house of gold and deny my kind and dim my soul.” This is definitely a record to lift up the weary, time and again. It’ll comfort you in sadness and warm you with joy when it’s time to get off your knees and back on your feet again.
Okay, that’s the end of 2010. I know I missed a whole lot, especially incredible releases like Erykah Badu’s amazing New Amerykah Part 2; Sade’s Soldier of Love, Mavis Staples gospel-American collaboration with with Jeff Tweedy titled You Are Not Alone; Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’ classic sixties Motown sound on I Have Learned the Hard Way and Bettye LaVette’s absolutely essential The British Songbook: Interpretations. Check those out, too. Now let’s move on to the already great year of 2011’s leading ladies. Let’s hope it hits the heights of 2010.
