Adalita – Adalita (Liberation)

I don’t know Adalita personally. Despite my “street press” years in the 90’s and her band Magic Dirt being a staple in those publications, somehow our paths didn’t cross. There was always someone else at InPress who passionately wanted to do the Magic Dirt interview or someone else that wanted to review their show. It would be a reasonable assumption that I’d know Adalita, but I don’t.

But in a way that makes my impressions of her debut solo album more honest. It’s hard to review an album made by a friend and Adalita is going to have a lot of friends trying to write about her album. Accordingly there’s going to be a lot of people who ‘want’ to like the album and who ‘want’ her to emerge triumphant, from a project that has a huge shadow across it.  That shadow, of course, is the death from a long term cancer battle, of Dean Turner. Turner was a towering figure on the Melbourne independent music scene, as the founder of Magic Dirt and the producer of a number of other cool indie bands. He was also Adalita’s best friend and the inspiration behind her taking the large step to a solo career. As her co-producer on this album, he is credited. As her friend, he is thanked and the album is dedicated to him. No-one, with any personal attachment, is going to want to say a negative word about an album that has so much emotion involved in its creation.

The point of this prelude is to emphasize that this review of this record is that of a critic, not that of a long standing supporter. For what its worth.

I saw Adalita perform a duet with Clare Bowditch on Patti Smith’s Because The Night at last years Rockwiz concert at the Palais. At the time I was moved to comment, “Seeing and hearing Adalita perform this song drove home the fact that she is one of Australia’s most arresting female performers. One day she’s going to find the right songs, the right band and the right context and her star will rise. It hasn’t happened yet, not on a large scale, but despite her being a veteran of the indie scene I suspect that she’s only just getting started as a musical force. Lets hope that the stars fall into alignment soon because her raw power and presence is a storm waiting to happen.”

My wish has been granted. These songs and the way they have been recorded and performed is exactly the right context for Adalita to harness the raw power and presence that she possesses.  This is brave, stark, effecting music, written with its heart tattooed on its sleeve and with its blood pulsing relentlessly. The courage comes not just from the fact of its recording but the confronting way the vocals are mixed for brutal clarity and the lyrics reward that investment. Having made the decision to pursue this direction Adalita has fully committed to the course she’s chosen. The best thing about this record is that it’s completely uncompromised, in both its vision and its execution.

Most of the songs combine angular electric guitars with quietly powerful vocals – and often not much else. A couple of songs have small amounts of percussion and violin and piano make little cameos but essentially the sounds are deliberately limited. The albums opener, Hot Air, sets the scene magnificently. It’s six languidly sung verses of yearning and regret followed by an extended electric guitar playout, which leads to a six and a half minute opening track. It make’s a powerful and unmistakable statement. It’s that art of making the minimal sound epic that has been exemplified by everyone from Neil Young to Nirvana at various times and it takes a special artist to successfully execute that approach.

Adalita isn’t the only woman in the world mining this genre. The comparisons with PJ Harvey, Patti Smith and Hope Sandoval are going to come thick and fast and there ‘s a Los Angeles artist named Jonneine Zapata who is very close in both style and substance. (Readers would be well advised to hear her Cast The Demons Out album from 2010). But in the end the comparisons are superfluous. There is more than enough room for many artists in this genre and each one has their own stories to tell and perspectives to lay bare.

Adalita’s stories and perspectives are riveting. Whether it’s the superbly descriptive Jewel Thief or the virtually spoken (and very Michael Stipe –like) Invite Me, she provides insights into her psyche that are almost uncomfortable to hear. She manages to keep one of the albums highlights, the hypnotic and prickly Goin’ Down to very near the end of the album, and it comes as a knockout blow for anyone still in any doubt.

It’s unlikely that there will be a more impactful Australian album released this year.  How it will be received by the commercial marketplace is anyone’s guess but in the end it has achieved its desired objective regardless of that measure. It’s an important, timeless piece of work, by an artist who has found her place in her new world.

Hope Sandoval – The Forum

Well you could either write a book or say very little about Hope Sandoval’s first ever Melbourne concert and the undercurrents that made it the almost bizarre experience that it became.

Anyone who had done their homework would have known that Hope Sandoval does not “perform”. She stands almost motionless in close to darkness and she sings. That’s not “performing” but there wasn’t anyone at the concert who would have turned up expecting her to do cartwheels.

So she stood inertly in the gloom and sang. When she sang, she sang with such clarity and such an extraordinary tone and texture that it was almost other-wordly. You can scarcely believe that it was live, so perfect was her singing. Her voice is a most remarkable instrument and any element of ‘show’ tacked onto her singing would have simply been unnecessary and ultimately pointless. I, for one, applaud the way in which she completely defies any of the normal platitudes of performance. There isn’t many artists who could or should try that and she is one of that very few.

However things did go calamitously wrong.

Five songs into the concert, which up until that point had been nothing short of entrancing, as she sang the line “ Is that the devil in your face” from the song Blue Bird she touched her face almost as if she had been slapped by an invisible hand, paused briefly and then marched off stage. Her band ground to a halt (not that they were moving with any great impetus on this gentle, quiet song anyway) and they left also, obviously completely confused by her departure. Drummer and Hope’s collaborator Colm O’Ciosoig muttered something into the microphone about a “technical glitch” and exited also.

Then for at least twenty minutes we stood in confusion. The “technical hitch” seemed to be of a most unusual type because in that time not one crew member appeared anywhere on stage to rectify the ‘problem’. It was obvious to most of us that a fuse had been blown but it wasn’t located in any part of the equipment.

Then without any further explanation of announcement Hope and the band returned to the stage. She murmured “sorry” and started into Trouble, the most accessible song from their Through The Devil Slowly album. Her vocal was again simply extraordinary.

They played another dreamscape song before playing the amazing For The Rest Of Your Life. This song, built around a loopy, discordant bass signature grew and growled like a caged beast and concluded in a cacophony of angry sound. It was quite brilliant.

What then followed was another walk-off, which could possibly have been taken as a pre-encore false finish except it was only ten or so minutes after the previous twenty minute break and no-one knew whether to walk out themselves or call for an encore.

After another inordinate amount of time they returned, played Satellite which ironically includes the lyrics Don’t play me for a fool you say/ Happiness is your hearts content/ Count your blessings/ Count your blessings on your way down.

At the conclusion to this song she whispered “Thank you, goodnight” just to ensure we understood that this wasn’t another walk off and we were free to leave unimpeded by the thought that perhaps there was another return to the stage in the offing.

So….given that the tickets weren’t all that expensive (and yes I happily paid for mine) and given that we half knew what to expect, should we be outraged? Or should be just be strangely excited that we were able to witness one of music’s more unusual artists give substance to her reputation? Is she disturbed or is she a diva? Does it matter?

Should some poor schmuck have come out on stage to announce during the unscheduled intermission that either a/ “We have a technical problem that we are working hard to fix and we will re-start the show as soon as possible” (clearly a lie but one we would have probably accepted in good humour) or b/ “We have an emotional problem with a singer is a dead set fruitcake and who seems to be losing the battle with the voices in her head. We have no idea what’s likely to happen next” (this being closer to the truth but kind of endearing all the same).

Either approach would have worked for me and to be honest the latter would have been a really cool moment in my concert going history. I’ll just pretend someone did make that announcement.  Maybe it was the same person who made the announcement prior to the show that anyone taking photos would be shot on sight. This was observed by most people with the result that the internet was spared people uploading 6000 images themselves with stupid “look at me, I have friends” expressions. I did however manage to sneak in the attached image of the stage show.

I dunno, I didn’t leave all that disappointed simply because I got to hear Hope sing which everyone should do once in their lives (but most wont) and I got to be present at a world class meltdown, which kind of had that reprehensible car crash appeal.

It was interesting.

Free Tickets to Hope Sandoval Concert!

You can read a (kinda) interview with the wonderful Hope Sandoval elsewhere on this here website but if you are a fan you hardly need convincing, right?

You are probably reading this right now because of the headline, Free Tickets To Hope Sandoval Concert!. Fair enough!

Thanks to the fine folks at Feel, Hey Hey My My has a double pass to give away to each of Hope Sandoval’s Australian shows. I’m having flashbacks just writing a giveway item.

In order to win the tickets you need to be the first person from your state to email me at editor@heyheymymy.com.au and tell me your name, state (where you live, not emotional state) and the correct answer to the question : In the Hey Hey My My (kinda) interview with Hope Sandoval who was she excited to hear had played the Forum Theatre in Melbourne before her?

If you answer “Justin Bieber” you will be wrong, so very, very wrong.

The show dates are:

Thursday 24th June: Brisbane – Tivoli Theatre
Friday 25th June : Sydney – Enmore Theatre
Sunday 27th June: Melbourne – Forum Theatre
Monday 28th, June: Perth – Astor Theatre

Hope Sandoval Speaks…sort of

Well I was warned that it wouldn’t be easy! A quick phone interview with Hope Sandoval and Colm O’Ciossag had been arranged in anticipation of their tour later this month. I’d been warned that Hope was very shy and that Colm would do most of the talking, which was fine – they are after all collaborators and Colm himself is an interesting musician being a member of My Bloody Valentine.

What was more difficult was that the reception from their isolated Irish base was sadly lacking and it meant that only one of them could be on the phone at a time. After talking to Colm for a while he then passed the phone to Hope and after the briefest of conversations the operator jumped on the line and promptly cut off the conversation mid-sentence, without so much as a “last question please”.

Oh well, I’m glad I just do this for fun these days.

In our brief chat I didn’t find Hope to be shy at all. In fact when I told her that she would be performing on the same stage (The Forum) as I had watched Rickie Lee Jones the night before she was positively effusive – “Oh Rickie Lee Jones, really?”, she replied. “How was that? Oh wow, that’s really cool.”

One question I did manage to ask was about the way that the music and the vocals on the latest album Through The Devil Softly seem to work in almost perfect mutual sympathy.

Even in her celebrated previous band Mazzy Star, Sandoval and her collaborator David Roback sometimes seemed like two planets on different orbits that magically intersected. With this album Sandoval’s extraordinary vocals seem to be in perfect sync emotionally and musically with her bands contributions, making it her most fulfilling work to date.

What makes this more amazing is that the band known here as the Warm Inventions is actually another independently functioning Dublin band Dirt Blue Gene augmented by Colm O’Ciosoig. Yet somehow this fully formed group of Irishmen seem almost magically suited to the notoriously reticent Hope Sandoval.

“Most bands that work well together that’s what they do – they use telepathy”, ponders Hope. “That’s how you know what to do, what chord to go to, what rhythm to play. Most good bands, that’s what you use. You don’t have to tell or describe what you are doing to a really good partnership, you just have to think it and they know it.”

And that dear tortured readers is the most detail I was able to extract from Hope before the operator intervened.

Fortunately Colm O’Ciosoig had been able to shed a little more light on a band that prefers to play in the dark.

In discussing the long awaited album – it arrived a mere eight years after it predecessor Bavarian Fruit Bread – Colm explains that it was an evolving amalgam of songs.
“It was a collection of songs that we had done over a few years but when they come together they complement each other and make a story”, he comments.

Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions perform in virtual darkness and in a venue such as The Forum that will be a strange but probably thrilling experience. I can only imagine how amazing Hope’s vocals will be in that environment.

Their other essential rule is that which prohibits photography. That immediately makes them heroes in my book – my pet hate is people who feel the need to take photos on mobile phones in the middle of shows – especially photos of themselves as if documenting their own presence was somehow the point of coming to the show.

“We do that for the benefit of people who want to go to the gig, and see the gig and enjoy it the way that it should be enjoyed without the distraction of people in their own little world wanting to take photos of things and send them to their friends” he explains.  “We’re fairly adamant about that”.

There is a visual element to the show though and as a recent review of a Los Angeles show suggested it provides an interesting additional sensory element.

“Assumedly as a compensatory measure, the set was accompanied throughout by film projections – primarily old-timey footage of people dancing, or flowers — which were blended together with other elements by multiple projectors in the balcony, providing sort of visual mash-ups, with the gentle fluttering sound of the film running through the projectors adding an extra element of romantic nostalgia to the experience.”

So there you have it. You can expect a dark room, some spooky looking visuals and the incomparable voice of Hope Sandoval filling up the space in between. And once you hear that voice, well any need to try and talk about it probably does become redundant.

Cast The Demons Out – Jonneine Zapata (Laughing Outlaw

Apparently a resident of Los Angeles Highland Park and Silverlake areas Jonneine Zapata is a stunning blend of styles recalling Margot Timmins, Hope Sandoval and Johnette Napolitano.

She’s harsh, vulnerable, confrontational, overtly sexual and intense and I’m glad she’s not my girlfriend.

Musically Zapata certainly recalls the smoky, psychedelic tone of Mazzy Starr on one hand and a more abrasive, electric style on another, the latter having drawn comparisons with PJ Harvey.

It’s not music for bright sunny days.

In fact I first played this album while driving through the Black Spur in an electrical storm and the effect was both thrilling and vaguely terrifying. But you don’t necessarily need any geographic or climatic conditions to appreciate this album – you do need to be in the right frame of mind.

Reports suggest that when she plays live Zapata is kinda scary and I can easily imagine that. She’s a dark brooding presence on record but she also gives the indication that she’s far from living in a narcotic haze. She’s aware of the impact she has and once she gets the knife into you she’ll twist it.

But even without the murderous overtones Zapata is simply an arresting vocalist. She’s got a strong voice but she works it as an instrument wandering over and through the stark musical background.

Cast The Demons Out sounds as much like a need as an album title.

Hope Sandoval To Tour – Really!

Hope Sandoval isn’t someone who I really expected to announce as an Australian tourist but it just goes to show that winter brings some dark and thrilling surprises.

Hope Sandoval was the voice of Mazzy Starr and since then has been somewhat elusive and reclusive, releasing only two solo albums in eight years.

This very website reviewed her latest album Through The Devil Softly and its every bit as enchanting, beautiful and kinda disturbing as its maker.

Here’s the review (the dates for the shows are below):

This is the second album from Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions, the first entitled Bavarian Fruit Bread having been released in 2002. She clearly operates to her own internal clock.

Hope Sandoval was of course the voice of Mazzy Star, the duo consisting of Sandoval and guitarist David Roback which released three  mesmerising and narcotic albums in the early to mid 90’s. While she claims that Mazzy Star are still purposefully (but slowly) working on a fourth album, it seems that The Warm Inventions is her most active configuration.

There isn’t a huge gulf between the sounds of the respective outfits. Both are purveyors of dark, slow and quiet music –neither could ever be mistaken for crassly seeking attention or making many concessions to mainstream accessibility.

Clearly Sandoval’s vocals work best when surrounded by a subdued set of hues and tones and both Mazzy Star and The Warm Inventions provide the requisite moods. But personally (and this may offend those who regard Mazzy Star with an almost religious reverence) my preference in now leaning towards the newer collective.

Like the Mazzy Star records, this album is exquisite, but where Mazzy Star was hallucinogenic in its atmosphere this album is more musical. It feels more collaborative. Joining Sandoval here is the drummer from My Funny Valentine, Colm O’Ciosoig and a relatively obscure Irish band named Dirt Blue Gene. While the band don’t play on every track there is a sense of their influence pervading the body of work as a whole. There’s a gentle folk element and a feeling of parts being created for the musical value and not just for their atmospheric contribution. The almost swinging Trouble is a fine example of this.

O’Ciosoig is a different type of collaborator for Sandoval than Roback may have been. He seems more like a collaborative partner that allows Sandoval to pursue her vision than a particularly dominant artistic force himself. You could hardly ever describe Hope Sandoval as “adamant” but there seems to be making a stronger commitment here to her perspective on the work.

But all this amounts to naught if it weren’t for “that” voice. Sandoval is a unique singer. Even at age 43 she still sounds extraordinarily vulnerable at times but now she also has a couple more colours on her vocal pallet. Her tone is still hypnotic but there’s a maturity in her voice now that is apt and intriguing. Songs like Blanchard, Thinking Like That, There’s A Willow and Blue Bird are amongst her finest ever vocal performances.

But despite the greater accessibility and broader reach of this appeal it remains true to her legacy. Through The Devil Softly is still an album for particular moods and particular times and none of those are likely to be light in shade. Hope Sandoval will remain a musical treasure hidden in the shadows of more dominant structures on the landscape.

Just the way she would prefer it.

JUNE

23 – Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane, QLD
25 – Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW
27 – Forum Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
28 – Astor Theatre, Perth, WA

Tickets are on sale April 30.