Tag: Portishead Dummy

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Melrøse Releases a Sultry and Feverish Single

Melrøse is an French electro pop duo — Anne-Camille and Anthony — that can trace its origins back to last June, when the romantic couple and musical collaborators decided to immortalize their relationship in a song, written while in a Los Angeles hotel room. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about the French duo’s debut single “Poolside.” One of the first songs the duo wrote that June night, the single was centered around skittering beats, twinkling keys, swirling electronics and Annie Camille’s achingly delicate and ethereal vocals singing lyrics in French and English. “Poolside” — for me, at least — evoked a mix of Dummy-era Portishead and sultry nights in bed with a lover.

The French duo’s debut EP is slated for a September 21, 2021 release, and the EP’s first official single “Insomnie” is a sensual song centered around twinkling synth arpeggios, a motorik-like groove and Annie-Camille’s coquettish vocals. And while sonically reminding me a bit of Soft Metals’ 2013 effort Lenses, the track evokes a sultry summer night, tossing and turning in your bed — and it being too hot to sleep comfortably.

The recently released video employs a rather simple concept: Melrøse’s Anne-Camille in a dark room, lit with one light bulb, singing the song and swaying to the song’s music. The song’s French lyrics appear below her.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Chiara Foschiani is a Paris-born-and-based singer/songwriter and pianist. Although she’s just 17, the Paris-born artist can trace the origins of her music career to learning the piano when she turned eight. Foschiani started signing when she was 13, joining local bands and performing on small stages and local music festivals before she started writing her own original material. 

Her first two singles “Queen of Disaster” and the cinematic, Dummy-era Portishead-like “My Glass of Wine” amassed 45,000 and 61,000 YouTube views in a week — and building upon a growing profile, Foschiani released her debut EP Trouble Maker earlier this month. “I wanted this first EP as a journey into the twists and turns of the subconscious,” the rising Paris-based singer/songwriter explains in press notes. “A sometimes painful journey that reminds us that all encounters are not always simple or healthy, but that there is always hope and that all experiences build us and strengthen us.”ght

The EP’s third and latest single “God Damn” is a slickly produced track centered around skittering boom bap beats, twinkling and reverb-drenched synths, Foschiani’s clear and soulful vocals and a shout-along-worthy hook. Interestingly, unlike its two immediate predecessors, “God Damn” may be the most straight forward, summery pop confections she has written to date. But at it’s core, the song is fueled by earnest songwriting seemingly born from lived-in experience.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Chiara Foschiani is a Paris-born-and-based singer/songwriter and pianist. Although she’s just 17, the Paris-born artist can trace the origins of her music career to learning the piano when she turned eight. Foschiani started signing when she was 13, joining local bands and performing on small stages and local music festivals before she started writing her own original material.

Since 2018, the emerging French singer/songwriter has been posting demos and covers on Soundcloud — with her material amassing over 49,000 streams. When Foschiani turned 16, she left school to fully dedicate herself to music, spending her time with literature, film, concerts, festivals and listening to new music and meeting artists. But generally speaking, she cites Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lana del Rey and others as influences on her work.

Foschiani’s second and latest single is the slow-burning ballad “My Glass of Wine.” Centered around thumping beats, shimmering and atmospheric synths and the French singer/songwriter’s self-assured and soulful vocals, “My Glass of Wine” manages to bring Dummy-era Portishead to mind, complete with a brooding, cinematic quality.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Tracing their origins to a chance meeting at DIY show in 2015, the Brooklyn-based post rock electronic band and experimental performance art Reliant Tom is centered around its core creative duo, Western Massachusetts-born, Brooklyn-based composer Monte Weber and Dallas, TX-born, Brooklyn-based choreographer and vocalist Claire Cuny. The duo’s collaboration is a seamless synthesis of their individual talents and interests – sound design, wearable technology, modern dance and hook-driven, yet genre-defying songwriting.

“Reliant Tom gives me the outlet to explore both pulse driven works while maintaining the other musical elements which I find fascinating — timbre, aleatoric processes, and interactive technologies,” Weber explains. Adds Cuny, “Our ultimate goal with Reliant Tom is to be a multi-media performance experience that straddles the line between pop and experimental music — and philosophizing about what that even means, and is that even possible as ‘experimental pop’?”

Thematically, the duo’s two previous releases, 2016’s self-released, self-titled EP and 2018’s critically applauded, full-length debut effort Bad Orange, touch upon the pitfalls of digital communication and the generally blasé nature of modern social interaction – through the guise of avant-pop and avant-punk influenced musical devices and arrangements featuring electric guitar, vocals, a hybrid electro-acoustic drum kit, synthesizers and Weber’s Kontrol Instrument, which he developed while studying at the Paris-based Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music as a way to make electronic music more tactile and immersive in its performance.

Slated for a Spring 2020 release through Chicago-based Diversion Records, Reliant Tom’s sophomore effort Rewind & Play is a decidedly bold and self-assured step forward: Cuny’s sultry and expressive vocals while being prominently placed front and center, effortlessly glide over lush yet spacious arrangements of shimmering acoustic guitars, atmospheric electronics and twinkling keys with the material possessing a cinematic air that recalls Dummy-era Portishead, Tales of Us-era Goldfrapp, Radiohead circa OK Computer and others. And while continuing to be tech heavy in their means of sonic production, their thematic exploration of communication and interaction in the digital age takes a back seat. This time taking a more human approach, the material may arguably be the most mature yet accessible, most emotionally honest and vulnerable of their growing catalog, as the album’s central theme is a documentation of Cuny’s descent into grief and depression after her father suddenly and unexpectedly passed away in front of her — on the release of day of Reliant Tom’s debut album.

“Nevermind the Garbage,” Rewind & Play‘s aching and brooding first single is centered around a cyclical arrangement of shimmering and wobbly guitars, twinkling piano and atmospheric synths that makes the song swoon from the dark and overwhelming weight  of loss and grief — and the knowledge that while you will find some way to push forward, that deep down you’ll recognize that your life will never quite be the same. “The song is about trying to return to a semi-normal routine by learning to manage the grief and anxiety that overcame me after the sudden loss of my father,” the band’s Claire Cuny explains. “My state was complex and somewhat guilt ridden because all I could feel was sadness. Even though I was at a good point in my life, with a loving partner, and reminded daily how fortunate I was when seeing the more severe hardships of other people such as chronic health issues and homelessness… all I could feel was despair, not the love or gratitude – but when you’re in the depth of your darkness it’s hard to feel much else.”

As a recently published Harvard Business Review article has suggested, we’re collectively experiencing a universal sense of overwhelming grief and uncertainty. Let’s be honest here, things are pretty bleak: on a daily basis, we’re hearing about hundreds upon hundreds of people dying from a communicable disease that any one of us could catch — and could possibly be carrying unknowingly. In New York, my home borough of Queens has been hit the hardest with the most cases and most deaths. Most of those poor souls have been heading to Elmhurst Hospital, and it means that the victims of COVID-19 live and/or work in (all or parts of) the neighborhoods of Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside, Woodhaven, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst, Corona, Rego Park and Forest Hills. We’re talking about neighbors, coworkers, associates, the grocer, your bodega guy, your FedEx guy and so on. And there’s this sense among us that things will never quite be the same once this is over. How will we move forward? I don’t know. But what I can say is that the song’s creators never would have thought that such an achingly personal song would have such a deeper, universal meaning.

indie rock by William Ruben Helms

Laura Burhenn is a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, activist and restless creative mastermind behind The Mynabirds, an act that has released four critically applauded and stylistically different albums through Saddle Creek Records — 2010’s What Was Lose in the Fire, 2012’s Generals. 2015’s Lovers Know and 2017’s Be Here Now. Burhenn also had had stints as a touring member of critically applauded and commercially successful acts The Postal Service and Bright Eyes. Burhenn has helped found Omaha Girls Rock, a non-profit that helps young girls find their creative voices — and she has given a TED talk based on her New Revolutionist photo project, which explored what it meant to be a revolutionary woman in this day and age. (Before all of that Burhenn was a member of Washington, DC-based indie act Georgie James with Q and Not U’s John Davis and released two-self produced solo albums through the label she founded, Laboratory Records.)

Interestingly, this year marks the 25th anniversary of Portishead‘s classic debut Dummy, an album that was highly-influential to Burhenn. “Dummy was my all-time favorite make-out record in high school and is in my permanent top ten, period,” Laura Burhenn says in press notes. To celebrate the occasion, The Mynabirds’ creative mastermind recently released a Patrick Damphier-produced cover of “Glory Box” that retains the original’s slow-burning and sultry nature and quietly defiant feminism — but while giving it a subtle, old-school country vibe. “That Beth Gibbons slid that feminist anthem into my teenage brain — that song completely rewired me.” Certainly, when women’s rights are being edged backwards, the song and its refrain “I just want to be a woman” would have to feel more powerfully necessary than ever before.

The track was released through Our Secret Handshake, a womxn-driven, women-focused creative strategy collective that Burhenn co-founded last year. A portion of the proceeds from the single will benefit Omaha Girls Rock.