Hats off to Jens Lekman for the heads up on Javiera Mena, the
Chilean pop siren with whom he collaborated earlier this year. We
don't know much about the songwriter, except that she released her
debut, Esquemas Juveniles, which was rapturously received
by an eagle-eyed few back in 2006.
She followed it up in April this year with Mena, a
record that plunged head-first into all things electro, disco and
Italo, emerging with an absolutely stellar set of productions with
the unabashed pop edge of Robyn and the niche cool of recent
revivalist darlings like Glass Candy and Nite Jewel. But with more
depth than any of the above.
Seriously, you need this record in your life.
...and here's the Jens duet: ...and here's an older track more in the pop classicist
tradition, with a stately ripple of piano and generous, softly
unfolding melody. Oh hark at us, we've gone all gushing:
Linda Perhacs worked as a dental hygienist for the likes of Cary
Grant and Paul Newman until her music was discovered by another
client in Hollywood composer Leonard Roseman. She cut her one and
only record in 1970, the eerily beautiful Parallelograms,
before melting back into obscurity and returning to her former
profession.
With an acoustic, gently psychedelic sound owing a clear debt of
influence to Joni Mitchell, Perhacs' music had a stark resonance
all of its own, scaling cosmic peaks with the the endlessly strange
(and exceedingly trippy) title track.
A steady cult attached itself to her name over the intervening
years, culminating in a reissue of Parallelograms on the
Wild Places imprint in 2008. She has fans in high places, too,
including Flying Lotus, Devendra Banhart and - somewhat improbably
- Daft Punk, who included her song 'If You Were My Man' in their
film Electroma.
An absolute stunner of a track it is, too, sounding not unlike
The Carpenters with none of the kitsch and all of the soul brought
nakedly to the fore.
Linda Perhacs worked as a dental hygienist for the likes of Cary
Grant and Paul Newman until her music was discovered by Hollywood
composer Leonard Roseman, another clienton the books at the time.
In 1970 she cut her one and only record, the eerily beautiful
Parallelograms, before quitting music altogether to follow
her own path in near total obscurity.
With a predominately acoustic, psych-influenced sound owing a
clear debt of influence to Joni Mitchell; Perhacs' music has a ???
all of its own, adding electronics and meandering, multi-tracked
vocals to her Celtic folk-influenced sound.
A steady cult attached itself to her name over the intervening
years, culminating in a reissue of the album on The Wild Places
label in 2008. She has fans in high places, too, including Flying
Lotus, Devendra Banhart and - rather improbably - Daft Punk, who
included her song 'If You Were My Man' in their film
Electroma.
An absolute stunner of a track it is, too, sounding not unlike The
Carpenters with none of the kitsch and the soul laid bare.
EMA is the solo project of LA-based Erika Anderson, formerly of
eerie dronescape duo Gowns. The internet falls unusually silent on
the exact nature of the project for the time being, but if this
gorgeous, slow-burning number is anything to go by there'll be
plenty to look forward to in the new year.
With a loose-but-focused feel that may be surprising to fans of
her last outfit, 'The Grey Ship' glides in on acoustic guitar and
breathy vocals more than a little reminiscent of Cat Power's early
lo-fi releases. Then about ninety seconds in a treated guitar buzz
makes its entrance - shades of Brian Eno's Another Green
World here, for sure - and the song begins a slow build into
something altogether more stately and epic.
Which is appropriate, given what Anderson had to say about the
track on her blog: "...for a long time I've wanted to make a
piece that changes fidelity in the middle of the song, from lo-fi
to hi-fi. I imagined it being like when Dorothy opens the
door to Oz and the whole world turns from black and white to
technicolor."
