Show Description
Legendary cult heroes Elysian Fields have always travelled in mysterious waters. Led by the enigmatic New York co-composers Jennifer Charles (vocals) and Oren Bloedow (guitar), the music born of their collaboration is not easy to categorize. They carry a torch for nature, sex, love, the cycle of death and rebirth, and the sounds of folk and jazz ballads, no wave and classical music, seamlessly interwoven into a style that is at once languorously romantic and tough. TimoutNY writes "the voice and presence of Jennifer Charles are so powerful that almost any criticism falls flat," and Oren has been called a "guitar god" by the Village Voice.This concert will be the official U.S. record release party/show for The Afterlife, Elysian Fields' latest effort. Now back from sold-out European tours, they finally bring the record to their home town.
Any one ever lucky enough to have caught Elysian Fields live, will tell you
that the experience is an otherworldly one, both intimate and transporting. The songs themselves are each one works of art, and Jennifer and Oren and the rest of the band breathe exquisite life into each one; the overall effect is nothing short of luminous. Also, get your turntables dusted off, as there will be vinyl for sale from the band for the first time.
Here's what writer Peter Spagnuolo has to say about their new album:
Now that you’ve eaten your own heart, will you ever taste ambrosia again? Never mind that now—the Afterlife brings you sustenance of a different kind: the bitter palate of true love, as it is lived and endured. Ten new songs from Elysian Fields stir the pot of Romance through all its flavors—from deranging eros to self-less devotion—but it is a menu of cold comforts. There is regret, and there are secrets; there is love that requires surrender and submission, like Baudelaire’s surgeon and patient; there is truth and treachery, and yearning that collapses into disillusion; there is love that panders, and great tenderness; and there is ecstasy, but only for tonight.
Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow make songs of such refinement, one searches in vain for the seams between sound and word: it is at times as if one heartsick, enraptured mind inhabited two heads. As always, they are joined at the table by their extended family of players from New York City’s jazz and pop demimonde, in music of timeless dislocation, uniting elements of cabaret, Noir rock and torch, Art Song and gospel: a murderous piano vamp is coming for you, now a guitar mocks, a vibrato-soaked chord quivers at the ear and falls off like a lover’s sigh; while an unadorned, simple tune leads us through a catechism of sworn love at first sight. Song-craft so rarely strikes such collaborative equipoise between lyric and setting—each partaking of the other’s instincts for allusion and inflection, attack and release—as here. This is hand-made pop music, patient and thoughtfully wrought, risky and knowing, inhabiting its unique idiom as easily as a sharp-dressed man mixes his woolens and silks, never sounding like pastiche. The band sinks us under a constant spell, while its emotionally naked, unflinching singer—in a voice sometimes only above a whisper—lowers her ladder of dark hair and dares us to climb.
Comments on These Artists
No comments found
Post a Comment
Select an artist: