foray: karen dalton

(Forays are going to be shorter pieces about music that is different from the styles that I am most familiar with. Rather than attempt in-depth reviews of musical idioms and artists I know little about, I will offer brief impressions that might interest you as well.)

The Guardian calls her the best singer you never heard. Nick Cave calls her his favourite female blues singer, and used her rendition of the traditional song 'Katie Cruel' as the basis for his song 'When I First Came To Town'.

Dalton's voice was often likened to Billie Holliday's. It has the same direct, raw feel to it. She sang in a high-pitched tone, which sounds as if it was produced mainly in the mouth with the throat clenched a little. Her voice sometimes sounds like a trumpet, and her phrasing is brilliant, sometimes more immaculate than her actual pitching. It can take some getting used to, but find and listen to her rendition of 'It Hurts Me Too' for a good introduction to her style.

She played a mean 12-string guitar, too.

She came by folk-singerdom in the old-fashioned way, never wrote original material, was reluctant to record and rarely did, and died homeless in New York city in the 1990s. But her music is not just an oddity left behind by an enigmatic, romantic character - it's very real and vastly soulful.

Go here for a discography and more links.

Jeff Martin - Exile And The Kingdom
2006

Rating - 6/C

I was a huge fan of Jeff Martin's erstwhile band, The Tea Party. Their first three albums (4, if you count the independant label debut) were among the most unusual and exciting things to come out in the 90s - a private genre composed of equal parts classic rock swagger, 80s new wave/goth romanticism and darkness, and eastern musical influences and instruments. Their 3rd major label album, Transmission added trendy electronic/industrial elements to this mix, but did so in a manner that conveyed musical growth and experimentation, even if some of the songwriting on the album was only passable. Since then, they rapidly fell off their pedestal, releasing perfectly amiable but stale albums that employed modern rock radio-friendly arrangements and hooks in a bid at replicating their first crossover hit, 'Heaven's Coming Down', and trotted out eastern touches and progressive flourishes in what increasingly seemed like sheepish sops to long-term fans.

Now The Tea Party have folded, victims of personality conflicts, and mainman Jeff Martin has a solo album out that he claimed would tap into the original Tea Party vibe, the vibe that made albums like Splendor Solis and The Edges Of Twilight so alluring and exciting.

He shouldn't have raised the bar so high.

Exile And The Kingdom plays a lot like a latter-day Tea Party album, only more acoustic and freed from the constituency-appeasing touches of the band's last few albums. Everything's just more stripped-down, largely acoustic and supposedly more intimate.

'Daystar' and 'Stay Inside Of Me' are trademark Jeff Martin romantic anthems (the later having a really egregious bit where Martin goes 'oh woo-woo-woo' in an uncharecteristic and cheesy falsetto), while 'The Kingdom' is the patented tortured-sensitive-soul schtick, only more ebullient and positive in tone, which isn't necessarily a plus. The gospelish backing chorus vocals give the song an excessive sheen and smoothness.'Black Snake Blues' tries to recultivate his earlier blues interests, but, while it isn't a '3 cent New Orleans blues song' as my friend Prem would probably put it, it comes across as rather studied and contrived, trying too hard. 'Lament' has some of the heaviness missing elsewhere, and is a decent enough song, if not especially fresh or memorable. The other heavyish song here, 'World Is Calling', supposedly a jibe at GW Bush is harder-edged, but it seems a trifle over-obvious. It's got some nice riffs though, the heaviest on the whole album. 'Good Times Song' is actually a bit of a breath of fresh air - a lively, folksy tune that is fairly different in tone from Martin's previous work, but it's also kinda minor. As is this whole album, really.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Jeff Martin hasn't forever betrayed himself with this album - it sticks close to the Tea Party blueprint, and the songwriting and performances here are all of a uniform level of healthy competence. But that's it- not only is there no fresh ground being charted, the lyrical content is positively stale when it's not cloyingly positive and the songs all sound like poor cousins of better, earlier material. It isn't self-derivative in the literal sense of ripping off past compositions, but it's nothing new or exciting, just music that must have occured to Martin very comfortably and easily. If you like The Tea Party, as I do, this will either be a pleasant but forgettable addition to your collection, or one more nail in the coffin. I leave the decision to you, and promise not to call you a fool either way. Really.

Green Carnation - 'The Acoustic Verses'2006

Rating - 8/B

The first time I heard this Norwegian band, they'd released a 60-minute epic song called Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness. Like any Jethro Tull fan, I'm inclined to view such excursions with a sort of pathetic hope, like a kicked puppy believing that his drunken master won't kick him this time. Fortunately, this particular album/song project amply delivered pats on the back and scratches under the chin. Essentially dark metal, the album included forays into more symphonic and acoustic terrain as well. So it's not a big surprise that, 6 years and two albums later, they'd choose to release a largely acoustic album. It's not all acoustic, but it is stripped down and without a single power-chord riff or double-bass beat in sight.

It isn't the sort of back-to-basics excursion these acoustic wanderings usually are, but a pretty well-realised album with a few moments of the prog-friendly ambition you'd expect from the band responsible for the longest song in metal history (not guaranteed to be an actual fact). It also has moments where prettiness overwhelms depth, which is why I'm giving it a relatively low rating of 8, when my first instinct was to go with 9 or even 10. I'd go a bit lower, but I just love Sweet Leaf, and several other songs are just growing on me, and I expect will do the same for otehrs. I still think Green Carnation could well have made every song equally good without sacrificing diversity, considering that they once created a 60 minute song that managed to sustain interest throughout.

The album is full of great atmospheres and melodies - even the weaker songs happen to be very melodically strong. Sweet Leaf opens the album with a truly brilliant mood, warm yet longing, with a great mix of high and low vocals and a neat fleshing out of the sound with horns, strings and electric keyboard. The song Maybe seems fairly normal, but it has a section at the end which evokes shades of psychedelia, with odd chorus vocals and theremin in such a cool manner that you have to love it. At least, I did. Alone is essentially a musical adaptation of a poem of the same name by Edgar Alan Poe and is distinguished by the presence of some very folksy violin playing - seems more Irish folk than Scandinavian, though. 9-29-045, which has three distinct parts in it, is the most proggish song here. The three sections segue together very well and the moderately dark atmosphere is pretty captivating too. Great melodies and chordal content all over the place. The instrumental Child's Play 3 is another weak spot, however - it could have served as a more light refreshment between the two full-course servings on this album, but the piano melodies are just a little too saccharine for my taste, a little too easy-listening to hold up to the overall level of ambition here. Similarly, the second song on the album, The Burden Is Mine Alone is a little too close to smething nearly any mopey modern rock band could have written to really excite me. It's actually rather good in its own way, but it feels too common for this album, especially after the stellar Sweet Leaf. The last song, High Tide Waves, is again a longer, more ambitious piece with slightly heavier arrangements and some great guitar playing.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: From the churning depths of Scandinavian black/dark metal emerges...an acoustic-dominated album of real depth and melodicity.