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Very nice review written about HYMN...
But once in a blue moon, an eggregious throat gouger sneaks up on you.
Reviewer: Ron Rude
More often than not, independent, acoustic, singer songwriters spend their debut albums strumming out self indulgent heartbreak whinges. There's a plethora of them out there, often with quality voices, crisp production, but ultimately doomed to be landfill. Why? Because they don't have a vision. They don't want to leave the comfort zone of their polite strumming and saccarin vocals. They're reluctant to leap off the stage and lunge at your throat. But once in a blue moon, an eggregious throat gouger sneaks up on you. And here she is, depicted with dark wings on the cover, she'll be your evil angel for the evening, and expect to feel weak and bloodless when she's through with you. Opening with a number called "A Twelfth Song" she wants to hear you screaming her name. She's thinking about the different ways she might die. Barking and whispering like PJ Harvey, everything is distorted, and in your face, and you wonder, is this what it's all about? Then, in total contrast, a charming, gentle piano chord progression backed by warm cello brings in the title track, Hymn, and Sage reveals some important things. She discloses that she's never been good with matters of the heart. I can believe it. You check out her photos in her blogs on her myspace page and it's clear that her preferred sleeping partner is her piano keyboard. She's married to her music, and in so doing, her emotional landscape is vulnerable, and apologetic, yet rich with a kind of unexpected wisdom. "I have been silent ever since I saw your grace" she sings, and you know this is more than your usual narcissistic acoustic singer. She also reveals a top shelf voice. High notes are almost operatic in their tonality. Every note is pitched perfectly. Vibrato and complex melodic intervals are delivered to perfection, with apparent ease and subtlty. Nothing is laboured and the effect is intoxicating. "Face to face with my own decay", she sings. The guitar on Atrophy is dirty. It's a third rate distortion, the kind you get from those cheap old pedals. From the days when we called it 'fuzz', and didn't try to dignify our dirt with terms like 'overdrive' or 'distortion' She seems at home with a cheap and nasty sound. I wouldn't want to see some slick producer trying to take that away from her. You know, cos they want the 'hits'! She'll bury those people. On Like a Sound, Sage throws several vocal takes over a backing that comprises of a drum machine that sounds like one of Martin Vega's cast-offs, some cheap electric piano, and a couple of fuzzy guitars with a bit of cheap wah thrown in. Yet, those several vocals are so compelling they could send sailors crashing onto the rocks. "I've got a shadow around my soul. Allow me to take these broken parts and make them whole. Standing next to you I feel unsteady." On Dissolve, Sage is again confessing her weaknesses, but rather than wallowing in self pity, she's wants to heal herself, and wants to provide healing to you. This is the point where we can applaud. She's built a bridge. We can embrace her vulnerability happily while she heals us. And it's a beautiful vocal melody. Lilting, sad, and sweet as organic Demerara sugar. While She Sleeps has some lovely guitar picking and piano. "When she breaks down in the bathroom, I hear her crying" speaks to you, because she might be talking about herself, but she might just as easily be talking about someone we know. "She's walking while she sleeps and she speaks in foreign languages" There's definately some sort of channelling going on here. On Star Shaped Box, a lonely piano figure, a synthesized squeeze box, and yet another appearance of Suicide's 1978 drum machine, which does little more than kick drum. "I can't heal your heavy heart" sings Gabriel Sage with multi part harmony. You knew it, hey, didn't you? No-one can heal your heavy heart. Now you've got a choir of angels affirming that for you. Sage seems Nicoesque, playing a harpsichord style figure on Sempiternal. "There are voices calling from a higher place". You lose your body in this song, you astral travel, and you start to spin slowly in the night sky. "You can leave my records just outside the door." Pillow Letters is a heartbreak song, and there's plenty of room for it here. In this one, the bloke has done the wrong thing. Yet she misses him, but she's not gonna even let him in the door. He has to leave her records outside the front door. Vinyl records, it would seem. The track even has vinyl scratches overdubbed. I hope he stood them vertically. Stacked horizontally the grooves can crack. You knew that, huh, you vinyl afficionado, you! This song alone makes the album. So, heartbreak songs are OK, but you have to do them right. Balcony Song opens like Ultravox. Drum machines and landscaped cheap keyboards. Far out! Like Ultravox before John Foxx left. The genre is called Pre Early Eighties. Don't call it Seventies. That means something else. The eleventh song is called Three Four. There's a real drummer. It's James Lynch of Soulscraper fame. The bass player and vinyl afficionado, Stephen Salathiel is regarded as a great double bass player. Most new artists let off their best fireworks at the start. Gabriel Sage saves the best for last. A haunting klavier figure and an incisive vocal give way to a magnificent cathedral chorus backed by noisenik guitar that sounds like a hundred AM radios tuned to static. Here, her dark winged soprano will rip like vampire fangs up and down your spine. As the album closes, you realise, here is a new, emerging star. Ron Rude 19 Sept 2006
7:19 PM
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