Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AMAZING, 26 Sep 2006
the voice, the piano, the beats...i love this cd. Stromata is my new favorite cd and i can't stop listening to it. with every single listen, i hear something new. some songs have so much going on and are so complex while other songs just rip your heart out with just her voice and the piano. charlotte has a way of making you bop your head and move your feet one minute and then making you sit and listen in amazement the next. charlotte has one of the most passionate voices and her spirit comes through on every song.
this cd brings somethng new everytime i listen to it. sometimes i'm in the mood for the upbeat songs while other times i find myself listening to her singing solo with the piano. whehter you want to bop your head or have you heart feel exactly what she's singing, you'll LOVE this album!
|
|
|
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a receiver meets a giver, 13 Jan 2008
Charlotte Martin is no artistic slouch. The former teen beauty queen and opera-level qualified singer's previous album On Your Shore was a solid record but hardly outstanding; marking Martin out as the potential heir to the glittery crown of several prominent female singer-songwriters. On Stromata, Martin runs a tour-de-force of an artistic step-up.
It has been pointed out by more than a few orservers that Martin's voice, piano-playing and songwriting owes a significant debt to the earthy, pianocentric stylings of Kate Bush as well as a direct descendant such as Fiona Apple. Although its fair to say that Tori Amos seems to be a more clear and strong influence, on Stromata Martin's musical web becomes wide, encompassing and enormously unpredictable.
Opener and title track Stromata (referring to the connective tissue in cells) is a lurching, uncanny beast of a track, sounding simultaneously like Choirgirl-era Amos, early synthpop Gary Numan and someone very mad and simultaneously in thrall to something dangerous and perhaps unattainable. It may not be conventional rock, but the cavernous drums and crunching beats mark it out as almost-heavy metal in intent.
This is followed by a complete change of pace in Cut the Cord, which disorientates with tricksy tribal percussion and weird proggish time signatures - and two minutes in, a completely mad pot-banging breakdown which then lurches into a chorus before swinging back to the banging. The trick is repeated in Drip where, two minutes in, Martin's vocal leaps into a completely out-of-the-blue high middle-eight that seems to have leapt in from another song. Unpredictable, and then some.
Another thing which impresses about Stromata is the bravura use of programming. Orchestrated by Martin and her husband/producer/co-conspirator Ken Andrews, there's no shortage of invention: not least on Little Universe, a mini-masterpiece of building a cohesive song out a what sounds like a great many disparate and contradictory elements and time signatures. Insect-y click-tracks pile on top of doom-laden industrial clanking, string effects, cymbals and buzzing washes, glitch-techno bleeps and at one point, the sound of Martin's measured voice apparently keeping time with what sounds like a bouncing rubber ball. The whole disquieting track sounds a little like something by Bjork; if only Bjork were truly an truly angst-ridden artist instead of just merely peculiar.
After that, Civilized sounds almost like a mainstream pop song; or at least, Fiona Apple fronting Coldplay. The more balladic A Hopeless Attempt pushes the albums worldview into even darker realms where one can only pause to admire the verve of Martin's song construction; before Four Walls momentarily pulls us back out of the mire and onto the dancefloor, as scattery drum'n'bass patterns build a furiously-coiled tension which eventually coalesces into a mighty drum-heavy crescendo.
Martin is also a natural master of the virtuoso vocal arrangement - another element that helps cement her arguable standing as Amos's natural heir. This attention to detail is strongly evident in the jazz-swing stylings of Keep Me In Your Pocket and the like-it-or-loathe-it black comedy of Pills - a list song that espouses the benefits (or not) of prescription medication with many lines about the effects of taking pills, then a huge chorus that goes simply `ba-ba ba ba-ba.' The overall effect is more uplifting than anyone might expect it to be.
Just Before Dawn makes for an eerie interlude; what at first appears to be a pre-pubescent choirboy on solo vocals singing lyrics in an undefinable argot soon turns out to be Martin, hitting some frankly terrifying high notes. In German. There's certainly more happening in one song on Stromata than most of Martin's winsome peers ever dare aspire to.
Charlotte's voice meanwhile needs little analysis - she can sing, and she is good at it - but as a lyricist, Martin seems inordinately preoccupied with self-introspection, grief, pain, loss and all its permutations. Thankfully there's a twist of humour and a natural catharsis to be gleaned from this which culminates in the heartbreaking album closer Redeemed. Going on the evidence of this song alone, Charlotte Martin looks set to be remembered as one of the better singer songwriters of her age.
There are a great many other young female solo artists out there in the world but in comparison to her contemporaries, Charlotte Martin is in a little universe all of her own. You'd be well advised to join her in it.
|
|
|
|
![Abnormally Attracted To Sin [Deluxe Edition]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61t6DIajV6L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
