DVDfever.co.uk - Rachael Yamagata: Elephants/Teeth Sinking Into Heart CD reviewDVDfever.co.uk - Charts, News and Reviews of Blu-rays, DVDs, Games, CDs, Hardware, Laserdiscs, Cinema Films & more
These days, it’s a brave move doing a double album. Should have been just one.
Singer-songwriter-pianist Yamagata is one of the few self-contained troubadours emanating out of the USA today.
Born is Arlington Virginia, this 31 year old Yonsei, a fourth generation Japanese-American of her father’s side and of German-Italian ancestry on her mother’s side.
In her early musical days, she was a singer with Chicago funk-fusion band Bumpus, spending six years touring and recording three albums.
Around 2001, some of the material she wrote didn’t fit the band’s repertoire, so she saved them for a possible solo career. In 2002 she realised her dream and secured a two record deal with label Private Music (Arista) resulting in her debut in 2004, Happenstance.
Since then her songs have appeared on hits TV shows The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy and The City, to name but a few, along with several films.
On CD 1, the Chicagoan delivers a series of piano based ballads that deal with simmering angst flourished with sumptuous arrangements using strings and a host of other instrumentation. You know the stuff – difficult relationships etc.
By definition this is a pretty melancholic affair, though there is beauty and heartache in every lilt of her smokey voice, who some might compare with Norah Jones, with the guts to actually let loose her tormented lyrical landscape.
You only have to hear the slicing twists of her vocal gymnastics on the gorgeous but somehow menacing Sunday Afternoon to know what I’m actually talking about.
Elephants opens CD 1, with hushed and plaintive vocals that suck you in instantly. When the strings arrive, it adds a darker tone, which are used to great effect throughout this CD.
Above all Yamagata isn’t afraid to show her insecurity and vulnerability and this best revealed on the stunning What If I Leave.
The last three songs are beautiful in every aspect, especially the stirring (and I mean stirring) Over And Over, but it’s the deeply intimate and simple Duet that shines above all here, where she bounces off the mesmerising tones of none other than (the incredible larynx) of Ray Lamontagne.
Teeth..is a very different beast - she’s decided to rock out (a bit).
Her voice doesn’t adapt well to some of the songs like the gritty Sidedish Friend and ballsy Accident, and in reality could have been saved for another album. It fares better on the mellower Pause The Tragic Ending where there’s a more subtle and refined approach.
Strange she should include all doom and gloom Don’t on this second disc, though it’s yet another example of her misty-eyed vulnerability which she’s become a master of.
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, 2004-2010.