| CD REVIEW TSM-SLW Promotions special # 6 : Hilary Scott - Wes Wingate & Hilary SCott - Val Kinzler - Wilde Starr |
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TSM-SLW Promotions special # 6 Well, as it turned out, I started on this follow-up of the #5 special much faster than originally intended, and you’re probably gonna get it posted at about the same time, when I hear how busy our editor-in-chief is gonna be whith other things to do in the coming week! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hilary Scott (do not confuse with Nashville born Hillary Scott, singer with Country music act Lady Antebellum, whose self-titled debut album of 2008 debuted on #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart) is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (she plays guitar, piano, and violin) with a somewhat eclectic bunch of influences (ranging from Led Zeppelin to Peter Gabriel, and from Sarah McLaglan to Nick Drake) which makes her music come over somewhat chameleon-like as well, containing elements of Folk, Blues, Country, Classical, and Rock...and her music/style has often been compared to the likes of Joan Baez and Billy Holliday, or the young Judy Collins. She started out her career in 1999, while still residing in Seattle, but the year after moved to Columbia (Missouri), where she founded The Hilary Scott Band, with which she’s played concerts throughout the mid-West and beyond, toured with the likes of Little Feat, Tanya Tucker, Janatha Brooke, and Beth Orton. With her band, she’s released 6 albums to date (2001’s Hypothermia, 2002’s The Floating World, 2003’s Come In Come In : Live 1, 2004’s 5-track EP Out Of The Wilderness, 2006’s Road To Hope, and 2008’s The Best Of Hilary Scott Live). But she also does solo performances, having signed a deal with Premier Talent International in 2007and doing shows in Vietnam and Korea thus far. Thus far the praising words…now for where the shoe hurts for me personally. Which is Hilary’s vocals! You see, although she doés display occasionally to have a warm voice [do try to check out this album’s closing track “To Make Me Feel Again”, a Bob Dylan original – she does other covers, by the way, like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, mid-Missouri songwriting legend Lee Ruth’s “You Electrify Me” (the cover originally appeared on a tribute CD organized by a Missouri community radio station), and Patty Griffin’s “Long Ride Home”, already featured on Scott’s 208 live album] she all too often sings at the top of her range, which results in a heady tonality which simply makes me turn my head after a couple of songs! I dunno whether she opted to play this album with that kind of voice on purpose, or whether the heady thing is something natural to her, but with THIS stuff, I can hardly agree with all the prasie she’s had before! Nay, then rather listen to her collaboration album with Wes Wingate. Oh, and you don’t have to take my words for Gospel truth, of course, just check out what’s posted at myspace.com/hilaryscott, or at the belltownrecords.com website (a Seattle area label which is supposed to support up and coming talent, but which has only released – all – Hilary’s records to date – a new album titled Indigo was supposed to emerge in mid October, by the way). As for the underlaying rating, which is my lowest ever, I guess…I’m sorry, but I simply cannot switch mmy mind to actualy like this album vocally, even if musically things are quite perfectly together. Evidently vocals àre a major feature in a band, and wheen those are fouled up, the rest suffers! 65/100 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, Wingate & Scott (who’d met a first time when Wingate - himself a recording artist with several albums to his name, and co-producer to other artists’ works - was putting together the compilation album Million Dollar Bash – a tribute to Dylan style singer-songwriters – to which Scott contributed a version of the song “To Make You Feel At Home” – cited in the review above as the single best track on her 2006 album Road To Hope) were inspired by some of the great male-female singer-songwriter duets (Joan Baez/ Bob Dylan, Alison Krauss/ Robert Plant), and this in part inspired them to cover a couple of those songs (“Mama You Been On My Mind”, originally a duet between Dylan and Baez; “Oh Sister”, a ballad between Dylanand a then unknown Emilou Harris, original on the 1976 Desire album) and other covers [Folk singer Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town” opens the album – you may know this song in a version by either The Spinners (released 1964), The Dubliners (1968), Rod Stewart (1969), Simple Minds (2003), or Frank Black (2006); “Steal The World Away” is a John Henry Parr original (if I ain’t mistaken, Parr is a Pop Rock artist with 4 albums to his name released between 1984 and 1996, wrote music for Meat Loaf, Roger Daltrey, and the Grammy Award winning theme song for the Brad Pitt featured movie St. Elmo’s Fire – but then I could be wrong, for this Parr contributes guitar to the track he wrote); Ryan Adams’ “Come Pick Me Up” – from his 2000 debut album Heartbreaker; Colin Hay’s “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” – original on the 1998 album Transcendental Highway…buy the way, Hay is formerly of Men At Work), and Madonna’s “Like A Virgin”…definitely the absolute surprise on this album, but what a great re-arranged version it is indeed]. Additionally, there’s also two original songs, Scott’s “Hey, Hey” (which she sings on her own…as she does with “Steal The World Away” and “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You”) and Wesgate’s “Back To The River”. The nice thing, compared to Scott’s solo work, is that Wesgate has apparently been able to convince her to sing in a warmer range of her voice…or at least for most of the album, because occasionally she still goes into her heady mood. Lucky for the overall result, Wesgate’s voice smooths that out somewhat! Find music by this pairing (all 9 songs off the album plus a live version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire”) at myspace.com/weswingateandhilaryscott. 79/100 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Val Kinzler ain’t no unwritten page in New York City’s musical environments, having cut her teeth in all-female bands The Technical Virgins and Missiah And The Sirens before making a name for herself as Valryrie. She then started roaming the clubs under her own name, frequently performing seated behind a piano on stage, and performing in a style which has (as far as the songwriting goes) been likened to Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams. Apparently, work on this, her debut album, started some 5 years ago (most of the material actually copyrighted in 2004), but was delayed time and again. Eventually things DID get together, and with producer Larry Russell (known from working with the likes of Billy Joel, Brian Adams, Mamas And The Papas, The Rascals) playing all bass and drums, some electric and acoustic guitar, and arranging (part of the) strings (Val also arranged, played piano and Hammond organ), the album was finally released through CDBaby.com in January of this year. Oh, guest performances on the electric guitar come from Lee Ottley (on “Broken Ballerina”, “Angel”, and “The Junky Next Door”) and Bruce Balmer (on “Genius” and “The Last Suffer”). Now I’d been listening to the album before checking up on Val’s history, and I’d been somewhat frustrated by the fact that intros to some of the songs were added as impromptu additional “tracks” in the mastering, plus the fact that the track order ain’t quite correct. Additionally, there’s even one track (namely “Love Won’t Suffer”) missing. The frustration coming from having to check out every song attentively while copying the album to my mp3-player for more easy listening, the events turned into opportunity because I had to check the lyrics more attentively. That, and the lady’s awkward vocal stylings (a sort of spoken word thing making use of weirdly wrought poetical-lyrics-with-an-attitude) came over to me personally as being somewhat remeniscent of Patty Smith…somewhat, because Kinzler’s vocal deflections are somewhat sleazier. The lyrics tell stories which Kinzler dedicates to any woman that’s ever been beaten up or abused (“Broken Ballerina”, for instance, is a tribute to Swiss dancer Monica Breele, whom was killed by the infamous “Thompkins Square Park Butcher”). Musically, you get a mixture of Soul, Blues, and Rock…which locks into the Smith thing just perfectly! Check it out at myspace.com/valkinzler where, besides 3 (full-length) tracks off the album, you’ll find an additional 3 non-album tracks (including “Love Won’t Suffer”, which turns out to be a very balladesque piano-drum-vocal diddy…which may indeed not have been quite at home between the 8 other tracks of the album – then again, it might’ve made a more rounded picture of the artist that is Mrs. Kinzler). Just found out Kinzler already won awards (no specifications), is currently mastering an album featuring King Chubby titled The Alleyways Of Love, and has already written several songs for a new album. Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’m ready to listen to a new batch. I’d even welcome a lyrics sheet being added to the next album (I know, the lyrics càn be found on Internet, but when dealing with an artist like Kinzler, you really wanna have the lyrics at hand, rather than have to look ‘em up…see?). In essence, she’s an artist well worth checking out for those into this kind of stuff! 90/100 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilde Starr stands for London Wilde (the –female- vocalist & keyboardist) and Dave Starr (all instruments besides drums, which are played by one Jim Hawthorne – apparently a self-taught musician/ music arranger/ recording engineer/producer, who’s worked closely with Brad Gillis of Night Ranger and Ozzy Osbourne to produce music for several tv sport shows, and composed music for Tiger Woods video games…in 1996 he won a CLIO award in the “Music Adaptation-Radio” category). Wilde has (until recently) been working behind the scenes of the music business since 1994, as a recording engineer, song writer, and studio singer & keyboardist. Now those into Post-Thrash Heavy Metal bands, may well know Starr from being the bassist for Bay Area’s Vicious Rumors…but let’s not forget that he’s also played bass on Laaz Rockit’s 1983 Prelude To Death EP, to Press’s self-titled 2003 album, and to Chastain’s 2004 album In An Outrage, and contributed songwriting to Destillery’s 2000 album Behind The Mask. As things turn out he is obviously not only a very gifted songwriter, but can also play some nicely mean guitar licks! It is while working on the Chastain album that Dave approached London to do some keyboard work for him on his solo project, and the story goes that when London heard what he’d already written, she was so blown away she offered herself as a vocalist! Turns out that was match made in heaven, really! Because London has a wonderfully clean, masterful, powerful voice which sets her on an equal level as some of the best singers in the Heavy Metal scene (think Dickinson, Geoff Tate, et all). In fact, in my personal view of things she’s one level up, because while being able to display that same power as her male peers, she doés maintain her female aspects, vocally! Making her “screams” more soaring than a man ever could, and keeping a female touch to her lower region vocals as well! IN her class, I know of only a few women, the last one I came across being Benediction’s Veronica Freeman. The match worked on other levels as well, because Wilde being a recording engineer, she also helped out in that department for the vocals, rhythm guitars, bass, and keyboards…Hawthorne recording all lead guitars and his drums. The end result? Well, it’s been described as a mixture of Judas Priest, Vicious Rumors, and Evanescence…and while I can’t remember the latter from having heard some of their music only once (still so much out there, still so much to collect and have…), I’d say the Vicious Rumors connection is somewhat evident, and I’ve never known JP to sound anything like this! Expect layered melodic guitars with a slight Progressive flavouring (without ever goin’ to excesses) embedded in a darn fat sound, getting eerie keyboard additions in the “calmer” tracks (which gives those a slight “Goth” feel), built upon a solid rhythmic section, and topped off with London’s incredible voice (she also does most of the backing vocals – although not credited as such, there àre some male backings as well!). String it all together, and you get a truly powerful album which will be instantly liked, nay lóved by most Power Metal fans, and will probably haul over most female-fronted band-haters to the “other side” as well! So be warned : to listen to any of the material you might find at either wildestarr.com or myspace.com/wildestarr will gget you hooked to the point that you may not stop before you too get ahold of a copy of the album to call your own (and just to make the search a little lighter, Furnace Maximus Records can be contacted at PO Box 152, Alameda CA 94501). Check it out : this is one of my top Female Fronted Extreme Melodic Metal albums of 2009! 98/100 Tony. |
