Originally from Kentucky, now Brooklyn based, Dawn Landes brings her
roots to the Big Apple with style and credibility. Her strikingly beautiful
voice is a major feature of the simple recordings done at an old fire station
in Red Hook in Brooklyn NY.
Recorded mostly live with seven musical buddies who play instruments as varied
as traditional banjos, pedal steel, and harmonica to less trad optigons, thumb
and toy pianos. The results are quite dazzling; on what can be considered
contemporary or alt-folk music. There’s a very good batch of songs to get your
teeth into, especially the snapped introduced plucky rocker Bodyguard,
a cool opener.
Covering traditional I Don’t Need A Man, her hollowed vocals steer the
delightful simple rocker. There’s no doubt, for me anyway, Landes comes works
best when she’s just doing straightforward acoustic ballads such as Tired Of This Life
because once again, her pristine singing is in sharper focus. Twilight
does the same for her, though the pedal steel is a sumptuous addition.
Sugar-coated Goodnight Lover is probably the kind of song that might
capture the UK’s imagination, but other songs, however good they are, may
struggle. Oh..and..don’t forget to remember the hidden acoustic cover of
Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down that follows the door shutting effect on
closer You Alone. It’s pretty impressive.
1. Bodyguard
2. I Don’t Need No Man (Traditional)
3. Tired Of This Life
4. Twilight
5. Private Little Hell
6. Picture Show
7. Kids In A Show
8. Toy Piano
9. Dig Me A Hole
10. I’m In Love With The Night
11. You Alone
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Review & concert pics copyright © Elly Roberts, 2004-2008.
