Truth Serum Presents:
An (intimate) evening of (intimate) rock
9:30 pm
$7
all ages
Featuring:
Cynthia Nelson (ex-Retsin, Sophie Drinker) (first)
Dear Nora
Lovers (last)
All three artists are playing in support of new albums!
More info at Truth Serum’s website.
*Cynthia Nelson* has been making ground breaking music for a long time. First with Ruby Falls (bass, 1992-200), Retsin (guitar, 1994-2001), and The Naysayer (drums, 1998-2002). No matter the instrument she plays she has always been a singer and songwriter. With this new album she creates mesmerizing loops and lays guitar and vocals on top. Occasionally there are violin, flugelhorn, or drums. Her songs resonate with listeners because her songs are crafted like her poems are crafted. Sultry songs about breakups, oddball rockers about long-distance crushes, others about drunken nights and the strangeness of strangers are captured on Nelson’s new CD “The Sophie Drinker Record” released on Jara Jaffe (Erase Errata) ‘s label Inconvenient Press and Recordings. Nelson lives in Brooklyn, NY and she is letting it seep into her pores.
*Dear Nora* is Katy Davidson plus some friends occasionally. Davidson and her collective of musicians have been making making smart, melodic music and touring since 1999. Dear Nora’s new album “Mountain Rock” picks up where the last leaves off. It works as a life cycle, loosely beginning with “Living Song” and ending with “Suicide Song.” Along this journey Davidson constantly alludes to the positives and negatives of being single or partnered. The resolve comes with “Love Song for My Friends,” (my personal favorite on the album). The album is intimate and honest and Dear Nora’s performances have the same quality. You are drawn into the stories and they seem welcoming and familiar. Her voice evokes Bob Dylan, Milly Bragg and Joni Mitchell. The songs here are made in a more punk rock tradition, the are short, subtly political, and bittersweet in content. According to Davidson, “Nature is the new rock and roll.”
*Lovers* is the brain child of gifted lyricist and heartbroken hero Carolyn (Cubby) Berk, the doe-eyed, silken voiced vagabond whose intimate tales of love and loss have garnered her overwhelming critical acclaim. Torrents of emotion fill each song on Lovers’ sophomore release The Gutter and the Garden, but an unflinching, underlying kindness runs throughout. Achingly beautiful string arrangements, subtle vocal harmonies, and layered soundscapes create a perfect musical accompaniment to Berk’s breath-taking imagery and nuanced narratives.
The Boston Phoenix raved, “Carolyn Berk’s songs are full of breathless melancholy and a sinking, infinite sadness. In them you hear hints of the circus-funeral magic-realist run-on folk song of Neutral Milk Hotel, the dreamy twilight grandeur of Mazzy Star, Bright Eyes’ last-gasp heartstring soliloquies, and the ghosthaunted majesty of Magnetic Fields’ loneliest highways. But I’ll be damned if Berk isn’t a more entrancing spell caster than any of them.”
Production:
Aliza Shapiro/Truth Serum
aliza (at) truthserum (dot) org