Lisa Cerbone has a gentle, childlike voice and with We Were All Together she has created an album that is somewhat evocative of Tanya Donelly or Kristin Hersh.
LISA CERBONE
WE WERE ALL TOGETHER
Ocean Music
2008-04-08
Every aspect of this package — from the case with its lyric adorned fine art photo cards to the crystal clear production — is finely crafted and exudes quality. One wonders why this lady is not more well known as this is her fourth release in the last eight years. We Were All Together is a collection of ten melancholy vignettes held against backdrop of stark hush. Cerbone tingles the spine of the listener with this intimate and quite beautiful recording. This quality is most evident in tunes such as “Change the Ending” and the opening track “Humming”. This record is of course not for everyone. It tends to be a little over-serious at times and leaves you feeling quite bereft once it is over. This last point also one of the positive aspects of this CD. After all if art does not engage you then what is the use of it?
This miniature review was originally published on popmatters.com
Lissa Schneckenburger’s Song is a cheerful array of old school folk tunes with the emphasis on the fiddle and quality vocal performance — a mixture of self-composed work and traditional songs from the New England area of the United States. She claims that region’s traditional tunes are somewhat ignored. What she has unearthed here are some real gems. Schneckenburger is modeled from the same plasticine as of Alison Krauss. Her voice is so sweet that it draws you in and blends well with her fiddle playing. She creates a certain intimacy with her warm tones that engages the listener. This is especially handy with tunes such as these because most of them (as with a lot of traditional folk tunes) are tales to be spun. One can easily imagine Schneckenburger playing her songs with a small group of regulars in a pub. All of them huddled around a fire to keep warm while it is howling a gale outside, but hanging on her every word. While Song is probably not breaking any new ground or likely to win a Grammy it is lovely to discover that someone is keeping this charming music alive.
If I could take a Being John Malkovich-type trip through the cobwebs and the undoubtedly dark places that reside in Singley’s cranium, I’m sure I would find a strange and scary place. Nonetheless, it would be bizarrely coated in some kind of sugary substance, not unlike the shell of a headache pill. If Lovingkindness is really anything to go by, despite it being a scary place, I would also find it quite an entertaining one too. This release is littered with pop loveliness that takes its cues from 1960s beats, as well as psychedelia and folk. Lyrically, Singley matches this eclecticism, using a post-modern dictionary that teeters on the edge of being twee. However, by golly, the mixture is like playing drinking games with some long-thought-lost friends while simultaneously having the worst hangover you have ever had in your life. I can’t wait to play it again.
This review was originally posted on pop matters.com
I’ve had a relationship with Ani DiFranco since around 1993.
ANI DIFRANCO
CARNEGIE HALL – 4.6.02
Righteous Babe
2006-04-04
This is not a conventional relationship, shall we say. It is somewhat of a long-distance one, but no less fulfilling for that. She and I don’t always agree, and she rarely listens to what I have to say. It is like she just doesn’t hear me sometimes, and we don’t see each other as much as we used to.
Before I get written off as some crazy stalker dude, I’ll cut to the chase – the reason I feel the way I do is that Ani is one of the few artists I’ve discovered who hasn’t later become fat and complacent on a major label (are you listening, Mr. Stipe?). Instead, she has built an empire of her own, on her terms. One of those terms is the way her music expresses an unflinching stare at American society, with all of its flaws and glory. On her records this lyrical gaze is sometimes smothered by her musical experimentation, as with her recent foray into funk. However, where she always succeeds is her live performance. The thing about Ani’s (I hope she doesn’t mind that I call her Ani) live performance is that you are left feeling that you have been really intimate with this lady. Hence the fact that I feel a connection.
Her previous general-release live albums, Living In Clip andSo Much Shouting So Much Laughter, shows this, but not as well as this new live album Carnegie Hall – 4.6.02 does. Here Ani is stripped from her touring band, playing alone to a Carnegie Hall audience seven short months after the events of September 11, 2001. She appears totally comfortable playing to a large audience and talking to them as if they were just friends in a bar. Equipped with only an acoustic guitar, a voice, and her arsenal of words, DiFranco wholly disarms the audience, not only with the performance of her songs but also with her between-song chitchat. In both aspects she appears honest; with every new line and every new chord you feel like you just get to know her better. Her (by now) trademark percussive style of guitar-playing is on full display, with nothing to obscure it. Her voice skips and soars at the same time, matching and counter-pointing the staccato of her finger-picking. Boy, can she play the guitar.
The selection of songs for this official bootleg CD (Note to Righteous Babe: “official” and “bootleg” are two words that rarely belong to each other) covers her career nicely. She raids the archives for older tunes “Names and Dates and Times”, and treats the audience to songs that are not quite finished, like “Serpentine” and the poem “Self Evident”. When I saw the latter two songs performed live with a full band, later on in 2002, they were more musical but by no means as emotionally executed.
There is a certain rawness and integrity to this recording. It is a snapshot of a performer coming to terms with a world that has been changed forever. With each song her show becomes more stripped, more frantic, and in places more out of key. Refusing to make any glib remarks about the demise of the people that worked in the Twin Towers and the landmark buildings themselves, Ani covers the thorny subject in her recital of “Self Evident”. In the liner notes she covers the self-doubt that she felt before performing the poem, and you can hear the hesitation in her voice. No review will ever do this recital justice.
For me this recording is most reminiscent of her early recordings (if you haven’t yet, check out Puddle Dive), which captured my interest so long ago. Its raw, stripped-down quality gets rid of some of her more recent funk pretensions and delivers her brand of folk/punk as she originally presented it. Ani DiFranco is always political. Whether it’s the politics of personal relationships or those of the public political sphere, she has a way of finding the raw nerve and poking it with a toothpick. Moreover, she does this with a cute smile and a giggle. She is the most dangerous sort of protest singer: an angelic figure with a large axe hidden behind her back, ready to hack away at conspiracy and political complacency. While some of her more recent recordings have been musically experimental, with Carnegie Hall – 4.6.02 she shows that despite her success she still has her feet firmly on the ground and is every bit the travelling little folk singer with a punk twist.
The review was originally posted on popmatters.com
When Jeff Hanson’s first album Son was released in 2003, everyone banged on about his voice. Many, many column inches about how his voice was just so… girly. Forget that! So the guy sings a little high. So when he sings he bears more than a passing resemblance to Alison Krauss or Nanci Griffith. These comparisons are meaningless, albeit founded somewhere in the real world. Jeff Hanson shows on his latest self-titled album that both he and his music have balls.
It is a very brave man with a huge amount of conviction who opens an album with a number that is so frail that it barely can support the weight of its own chorus. It is not until four minutes into “Losing a Year” that the song finally picks up enough nerve to step forward. Then, for the remaining (nearly) four minutes, it sways at you in a trance, like someone who has temporarily lost their mind. Strings come and go, and you are left there, inexplicably with a lighter in your hand, alone, and in a dark, dark place. Just you, your tears, and the lighter burning your fingers.
If you are coming to Jeff Hanson fresh, you are in for a real treat. His music is a subtle blend of all the songwriters who provide the soundtrack to those important moments in your life. Like his voice, the songs possess a brittle quality, so much so that when he rocks out (as in “Welcome Home”) it comes as such a shock that you feel uncomfortable and almost want it to stop. However, for the largest part Jeff Hanson is an introspective offering that is very easy on the ear and offers few such shocks.
This may make the record sound a little bland. It really isn’t. Sure, it borders on a kind of “stadium folk” in places, but not to the point of absurdity. Nonetheless, Hanson’s work is drawn with the same fine pencils as the Cowboy Junkies or Mary Black (see “Something About” and “This Time It Will”, respectively, for examples). He is often compared to the late Elliott Smith in terms of his songwriting, and indeed there is darkness to be found. But as with Smith, it is a sweet darkness that is not at all cold, but like a warm duvet on a chilly, rainy Sunday afternoon. I think the word I am searching for here is “bittersweet.”
Lyrically, Hanson takes you on a journey through a landscape of short tales of loss, laughter, and hope. There is not much mirth here. Yet there always seems to be a silver lining somewhere, with the implicit warning that behind each silver lining there may be a cloud. I have a horrible feeling that I am making it all sound a little gloomy. In a way it is, but only in the same way that going to see a sad film can give you such a feeling of release that you experience euphoria afterwards.
The majority of these songs have a certain “ahhh” quality that is usually associated with fluffy kittens or newborn babies. If you are a guy, your girlfriend will probably like this album, and if you don’t like it too, where is your soul? If you are a girl and you don’t like this, I don’t want to hear about it, because you are definitely the kind of girl my mother warned me against. All in all Jeff Hanson is a lovely record that will not disappoint fans of his debut and can only serve to increase the popularity of this talented singer/songwriter.
originally on https://www.popmatters.com/jeff_hanson_jeff_hanson-2495675330.html
