00-rachael_yamagata-happenstance-2004-aaf.nfo
Artist : Rachael Yamagata
Album : Happenstance
Tracks : 14
Time : 1:02 hours
Bitrate : 192kbps
Size : 86MB
Label : RCA
Str.date: 06/08/2004
Rip.date: 06/08/2004
Ripper : Team aAF
The more she records, the more she becomes a cipher.
Rachael Yamagata's 2003 self-titled EP was greeted by
accolades from often-lazy critics seeking to
contextualize and consign its musical references to a
tidy pop cult box. But somewhere in that mix of six
love-haunted songs, the record, and its creator,
remained elusive, slipping away before perception could
give way to actual definition. Happenstance is
Yamagata's debut long-player; it is a logical and
delightful follow-up. It features 13 tracks (plus an
uncredited surprise) that are either self-penned or
Mayer, Josh Kelly) and mentor/guitarist Kevin Salem,
among others. The cuts "Worn Me Down" and "Reason Why"
carry over, but they have been completely rearranged and
re-recorded. It is an unabashedly lush and deeply
textured pop record that makes no apologies for its
radio-friendliness or its near Baroque pop adornments.
And it shouldn't -- after all, don't listeners need good
music on the radio? The immense care taken with this
album is reflected in its elegance, to be sure, but also
in its willingness to overreach in terms of emotion and
execution (the string arrangements are wonderfully
irreverent, if not excessive). Yamagata's voice is full
of elliptical slides and slurs; it is demure and bold,
it swoops and croons and whispers and looks for the
crack in a lyric in order to dig out its depth. One can
hear that same quality in vocalists such as John Martyn,
Billie Holiday, the young Rod Stewart, Dinah Washington,
Maggie Bell, and Jeff Buckley. That context embodies
within it a certain kind of approach, one that fuses
grace with grit, and certainly passion with pathos, but
also the slow, erotic burn of control and restraint,
where heartache becomes the basket in which everything
else is carried through the throat and is given
unvarnished utterance in the phrasing, becoming
something that lies just beyond the scope of the sung
words; it points not out, but down and in. In its grain
is the pastoral languor of a summer afternoon combined
with the emotional intensity of a gleaming stiletto
opening a vein with determined desperation. The
similarity here is in the quality of performance, not
"sameness." Listeners can definitely hear traces of her
influences, but these are woven into a fabric that
serves the song, not the singer.
These songs are littered with the poetry of ghosts who
dwell in realms of unrequited love, dislocation, desire,
loss, anger, and sometimes the acceptance that allows
them to move on. They offer a striking melodic and lyric
balance weighted by the tension held between idealism
and bewilderment and the sad world-weariness of an
assaulted, oft-betrayed spirit. The songs here reach
across musical eras, genres, and radio formats
effortlessly, but their deeply moving emotional
signatures resonate long after the record has echoed
into silence.
01 Be Be Your Love 4:12
02 Letter Read 3:44
03 Wore Me Down 3:42
04 Paper Doll 5:17
05 Ill Find A Way 5:14
06 1963 4:04
07 Under My Skin 4:13
08 Meet me by the Water 3:59
09 Even so 4:18
10 I Want You 2:57
11 Reason Why 5:07
12 Moments With Oliver 1:02
13 Quiet 9:22
14 Untitled Bonus Track 5:47
Rippers: Umm Yea We Have a few ;)
The Scene!
aAF was created in Jan 2001 to fill a void left in the scene
by groups who would refuse to release anything but current
year music.paved the way for many groups to follow our lead and opened
up the music scene for all music lovers while took a ton of abuse in
the process.3 years later 13000 albums we proved our point!
check out our tv/svcd/dvdr/divx divisions new for 2004
It's not the Year that Matters it's the Music
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