The vaguely retro strains of Erin Jordan and her band has a very special sound. Jordan comes across as a sibling to Erin McKeown and Jolie Holland and her band match her well.
Jane is an up-tempo impish song with a neat jazzy backing. Jordan’s sweet vocal is a joy to hear.
Unemployed on Monday humorously deals with a very real problem, as Jordan sings of the comforts of love. The band expertly plays the backing.
Porque no me amas is a rare detour into Spanish, that works, Jordan delivering her vocal against a soft backing.
Amphibian is a nicely ambitious, cinematic song with amusingly surreal lyrics. Jordan sounds as ever, more chipper than decadent despite words of squalid bars.
She still carries her songs well, and that makes for a lively, engaging album.
Track Listing
1 Black Widows
2 Jane
3 Intoxication
4 Unemployed on Monday
5 Sleepy Town
6 Unrequited
7 Porque Tu No Me Amas
8 Circus Song
9 Amphibian
10 Corpus Christi
Album Name: How to Have Sex with Canadians
Artist: The DoneFors
Year/Label: 2008 / Independent [Buy at Amazon]
Review by Amy Lotsberg Producer of Collected Sounds
Their CDBaby page says RIYL: Beatles, Joni Mitchell. Is that a joke? I don’t know how much more disparate you can get unless you add the Sex Pistols to the list. Well, the Donefors don’t sound like any of those if you ask me. But judging by their promo package and their website they do have a healthy sense of humor. But you may have guessed that by reading the title of the record.
The lead female vocals (by Janice Stoll) have a bit of a 60s pop sound. When pop music had a little touch of a jazzy sound to it. Her voice is very likeable.
She’s also the composer and lyricist and a skilled one at that. The songs have fun, interesting melodies and the lyrics are smart and clever if not always quite as happy as the tempo may have you believe.
A particular stand out example:
I’m a drunken lollipop
Lick my tattoo
I find you kind of pervie
That’s what I say to you
But you don’t speak a lick of English
So honey as you were
I’ll save my regrets for the morning
-from Lemons From Argentina
This is one record I want to have more time with. I have a feeling if I could listen to it and just it for a long time I’d be in love. But I have 30 other CDs to get to.
If I get a chance to come back to this one, I will write more.
Track Listing
1. The Narrator
2. In a Cornfield
3. Mouthful of Marbles
4. Lemons from Argentina
5. One By One
6. In My Blood
7. The King and Me
8. Crazy Eight
9. Septembre en France
10. On Scarlet
11. Red Fish
12. The Last Thing You Do
I got an update email from an artist who mentioned that her songs are on a new website called IndiEclectic. The dealio is this: pay $20 and they’ll give you 2,000 songs from over 200 artists. It’s basically every song on their site. Sounded interesting. So I checked it out.
IndiEclectic.com is a community of like-minded musicians and artists who have come together to share their music in an environment unencumbered by mainstream music distributors.
The way it’s set up is that it’s mostly unknown artists (though seeing as I do what I do, I’d heard of many of them). But the way to find them is to browse the site looking for artists you DO know and appreciate and they (the artists, not the website) then recommend artists you may like, or ones they personally like. For example, I went to Alanis Morrissette. She recommended Veda Hille (who is fantastic, by the way) just browsing around from there I found a woman called Audra Mae. I listened to one of her songs and I really liked it. So hey, new discovery, Audra Mae. Voila!
It’s pretty cool. I get nothing from talking about it, and I have not signed up for it yet myself. * But I thought perhaps you would appreciate it.
*I have too many other songs I have to listen to that I rarely get time to listen to anything I choose, plus I already get 50 downloads from Emusic every month, so I simply don’t have time to listen to that much. Yes, it’s a good problem to have, trust me, I am not complaining.
