Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A drug you don't wanna get over, 11 Jan 2009
It's been four long years since Rachael Yamagata's debut album "Happenstance" made its appearance, and since then we've not heard a sung word.
So that makes the appearance of "Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart" even sweeter, especially since Yamagata has clearly not stagnated. Her second full-length album is just as bluesy and quietly bittersweet as her prior work, but four years have added polish and depth to her music -- especially the layered, string-soaked instrumentals and hauntingly world-weary lyrics.
"If the elephants have past lives, yet are destined to always remember/it's no wonder how they scream," Yamagata muses over a delicate piano melody. As a backdrop of strings pass behind her, she meditates on a past lover who is "forcing me to remember when all I want is to just forget you," and compares the painful memories and lingering feelings to various animals -- elephants, tigers, hawks.
As the song ends, she warns listeners sadly, "So for those of you falling in love/keep it kind, keep it good, keep it right/Throw yourself in the midst of danger, but keep one eye open at night...."
Things get no more cheerful in the songs that follow -- the reigning sound is that of piano/string ballads, drifting sadly through tales of lost love and haunting regrets. Yamagata does give the sound some variation -- gentle thumping ballads asking "what if I leave?", soaring laments, string-soaked jazzy tunes, trickling instrumentals that echo the first song, a folksy "Duet" with Ray Lamontaigne, country-edged melodies. It ends with a suitably plaintive lament ("Someday I hope I can find the horizon/I've been all around the world... And if I did teach you anything at all/I hope that you learned how to love...") that drips with painful sentiment...
.... except it's not actually the end. There's a second disc on here called "Teeth Sinking Into Heart," which is less into the whole piano-jazz/pop sound and more into rough-edged rock'n'roll. Yamagata smashes through the off-kilter melody of "Sidedish Friend," which sounds like the next step from her sadder songs: "I don't want you hangin' out with me/But I want you when I call/We can stay together separately/And we won't be lonely at all...."
She whirls through the celebrity clashes and breakups of "Accidents" ("There's nothing worse than bitterness/just splashed across the page") and the blurry, bass-driven "Faster." The EP finishes with a sort of balancing act in the multilayered "Pause the Tragic Ending" and "Pause," where the basic pop song expands into bittersweet, epic proportions. So different, yet so beautiful.
"Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart" is a pretty unique musical experience: the first disc takes Yamagata's signature sound and makes it deeper and richer, and the second forges fearlessly into PJ Harvey/Pixies/Tom Waits territory. It would have been a disaster if she had broken up the bittersweet expanse of "Elephants" with the rock'n'roll sound of those later songs, but as a full-length album and accompanying EP it works perfectly. Call it spreading her musical wings in two very different directions.
Most of these songs are cradled in Yamagata's gentle piano melodies and blanketed in a thick swathe of overhanging, bittersweet strings. These two instruments weave together in a rich expanse of melancholy music that can reach some truly epic climaxes, or fall into a haunting murmur ("This little life... goes so fast..."). Additionally, Yamagata sprinkles them with a little flute, thumpy drums and some folksy guitar too, only to then switch over to grinding bass, reverberating guitar and breakneck pace in the second disc.
Only the last couple songs bridge over the two styles, uniting the rock'n'roll mentality and sharp guitars with the plaintive quality and nimble guitars of her quieter songs. "Pause the Tragic Ending" and "Don't" are the most brilliant that Yamagata has made yet.
Her husky voice has lost none of its quality either -- she still sounds world-weary and wise beyond her years, and seemingly perpetually haunted by the ghosts of old love affairs... although she can turn into a raw-voiced rock chick when the song demands. Her songwriting is what has changed -- it's gotten a lot more evocative and mature, with memorable metaphors ("A whispering ghost of neighborhood flame") and vividly emotional lyrics ("If the hawks in the trees need the dead/if you're living you don't stand a chance/You can lie there and say you are fed/but there are only two ends to this dance...").
It's been four years, but Rachael Yamagata has grown as a songwriter and a musician -- and while "Elephants" shows a more mature version of her past work, the accompanying "Teeth Sinking Into Heart" reveals a whole different side.
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4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Teeth sinking into my heart, 8 Nov 2008
Her previous record, Happenstance, has been one of the most played albums on my CD player. It's packed with my family's favs, and the whole is so astonishing and diverse. Sometimes swinging (Be be your love), sometimes old-school (I want you), real-pop (Worn me down), etc. etc. Few months ago I was immediately attracted by the appetizer to her new album, which included a great song, "The Other Side" (why wasn't it included in the final version of the album?!), but already the appetizer seemed dangerously homogenous and too `lazy'.
Now, after 4 years of patient waiting, I am disappointed. I started to listen to "Elephants" with so much hope and warm feelings in my heart, and after 20 listenings I AM DISAPPOINTED. It's ambitious, but sometimes pretentious as well. Each of the most promising songs MISSES SOMETHING. Just to mention two examples: `Duet' is moving, but Ray LaMontagne's vibrato is close to self-parody. "Sidedish friend" - wow, finally something dynamic, but it sounds like an impoverished cousin of `Worn me down' from "Happenstance".
Rachael's voice is better, deeper and more sensual than ever. It has matured over the years, but unfortunately repertoire didn't catch up. Anyway, I am still willing to make a blind subscription to every Rachael's CD. If you don't have "Happenstance" yet, it's better to devote your money to Rachael's great debut. If you liked it, you will still find some good echoes of her talent and great sensitivity on "Elephants".
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4.0 out of 5 stars
She can really nail the aftermath of love gone sour, 18 Aug 2009
The piano-driven songs of spurned love were the best thing for me about Rachael Yamagata's debut Happenstance (2004). However, the rest of the album was uninspiringly poppy and represented, I felt, a dramatic undersell of Yamagata's talents. Some songs were also all too clearly influenced by Fiona Apple (influences themselves are not a problem, but if you're trying to carve out your own niché and audience, it's probably better not to wear them so clearly on your sleeve). Between her first and second albums passed four years in which Yamagata released a decent EP and contributed vocals to albums by Bright Eyes, Ryan Adams, Rhett Miller and Ray LaMontagne (the latter of whom also appears on this album).
The four-year hiatus seems to have served her songwriting very well since she returns on 'Elephants...Teeth Sinking into Heart' with a maturer sound, more emotionally consistent lyrics and a more confident vocal delivery. The standout songs of the first half of the album - above all 'Horizon' and 'Over and Over', the first of which exceeds the eight-minute mark - are stunning reminders of what Yamagata can do if she puts her mind and heart to it. This time around she is much more interested in creating a sustained, emotionally intimate connection with the listener. Weary, brooding ballads of lost love and changed minds delivered sometimes in a near-whisper give you the feeling that you are right there in her front room, voyeuristically participating in the cathartic aftermath of love gone wrong.
Like Anna Ternheim on her most recent album, Yamagata repeats specific sentiments and sentences almost obsessively until every last fibre of emotion is spun out of them. For example on the refrain of 'Horizon': "Nothing is clear / No, no, no, nothing is clear to me!" might sound absurd written on the page but it is sung and wrung out to brilliant emotional effect on the album. When the lyrics unravel to tell of disillusionment with an ex - "I don't believe in you / Like I so wanted to / I hope you're asking the heavens above / To forgive all the damage you've done / And if I did teach you anything at all / I hope that you learned how to love" - it's tempting to believe that they are addressed to her ex, the British singer-songwriter Tom McRae, who left her. Certainly, some of the lyrics do seem codedly to reference his: "You have blood on your hands.../ You poured blood in my heart" (Sunday Afternoon) recalls the title imagery of his album Just Like Blood; both have sung of having a meeting place down by the water and draw on rain imagery, associating it with redness (McRae on 'Sao Paulo Rain' - a song she used to cover live - and Yamagata on 'Sunday Afternoon') and lightning strikes in both Yamagata's 'Over and Over' and McRae's 'I ain't scared of lightning'. But Rachael has been more cryptic in interviews, saying: "I certainly love a great heart-wrenching lyric, but oftentimes I'm not even specifically referencing a relationship...for me, it's really all about the universal nature of just trying to relate to another person."
Although I couldn't warm to the grungier, rockier songs on the shorter second half of the album (Teeth sinking into Heart) and the vocals provided by Ray LaMontagne on 'Duet' tend towards the cloyingly and annoyingly affected, the vivid tracks mentioned above make this album one to savour.
The standouts (IMO): Horizon, Elephants, Over and Over, Sunday Afternoon, Don't
Also recommended>
* P J Harvey - Who Will Love Me Now (from the film The Passion of Darkly Noon)
* Anna Ternheim - Leaving on a Mayday (2008)
* Natalie Merchant - Tigerlilly (1995)
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~ Rachael Yamagata
~ Leona Naess
~ Neko Case
~ Buddy & Julie Miller
~ Leona Naess
