2008: Friday, May 9 ~ Arm-Chewing, Piano-Shredding Inspiration, Allison Crowe's "Little Light" Shines in Paris, "The City of Light"
Our world's deepening love affair with Allison Crowe
takes a Gallic turn tonight as the Canadian singer-songwriter embraces
the Fazioli piano and her audience inside Paris' L'Archipel theatre.
From 'La Ville-lumière', Crowe tours to Prague, Frankfurt, and Vienna
- celebrating the release of her sixth album, "Little Light".
"Quelle voix magnifique,tout l'album est merveilleux, c'est un
enchantement," says a reviewer on Jamendo, the pioneering
Creative Commons music platform. Adds another, "Quelle douceur une
voix venu d'un autre monde..."
"I would chew my arm off to sing like Allison," says West
Virginia, Mountain Stage-loving music blogger Muruch.
"Though I guess that would make it difficult to shred a piano like
she does, which seems to be half the fun" - referencing,
respectively, "Hold
Back" ~ and "the
fervent, mesmeric, piano-hammering extended version of 'Disease'
" ~ both songs on Crowe's newest CD.
"She is reminiscent of some of the great women vocalists who
shaped rock music in the late '60s and early '70s. Allison's emotional
delivery is unique in today's music," is how music industry
veteran, and manager to Bif Naked, Peter Karroll's earlier framed it.
A majestic voice and talent such as graced the stages of rock's golden
era, with advancing recorded and live performances Allison Crowe's
singularity is increasingly manifest. As a singer, songwriter,
interpreter and entertainer she combines elements of artistry in ways
distinct in generations of popular music.
"Ever wonder what it would have been like to listen to a gifted
singer/songwriter from Saskatchewan in a small, intimate hall before
she became Joni Mitchell? Don't fret. There's no need to turn back the
clock. Check out Allison Crowe," advises The Record's
Robert Reid.
"I believe that Allison Crowe is the only living person - with the
possible exception of Glen Hansard - that can pour their whole being
into any cover and make it sound like an entirely new song," notes
Muruch.
Alongside her art, Allison Crowe's direction in dealing with the
business of music is to, also, take the path less travelled. She cites Righteous
Babe Ani DiFranco and Quinlan Road's Loreena McKennitt as
inspirations in the 2003 launch of her own record label, Rubenesque
Records Ltd. Considering Crowe's verdant grassroots success,
journalist Jennifer Carswell asks in a current Paris Voice
feature: "Is she out to change the face of independent
contemporary music, infusing it with new meaning...?"
Her mission is purely musical. Still, anything remains possible for a
creator recently described by Ross Hocker, longtime public broadcaster
with WGTE/NPR, as "not in the least corrupted."
Word on Allison Crowe's upcoming European and North American concert
dates is forthcoming.
Here, now, be description of the new album, "Little Light":
Created from Newfoundland to British Columbia, the newest
singer-songwriter collection from Allison Crowe opens with a rustically
shimmering version of "Northern Lights" - a song
Allison performed 'specially for the John Lennon Northern Lights
Festival in Durness, Scotland. "Angels" is
recorded live by Scott Littlejohn at St. Andrew's United Church,
Christmas-time, in Allison's birthplace, Nanaimo, Canada. She's backed
here by bassist Dave Baird and percussionist Laurent Boucher. "Disease",
a song of social commentary, has, through years of live performance,
become epic - channeling Beethoven, grunge and more. Here 't'is
captured in its raging glory by Larry Anschell (on International
Women's Day 2008, the same night celebrating the 20th Anniversary
of Anschell's Turtle Recording Studios. Larry "Turtle"
Anschell, Engineer and Producer, with Brad Graham Co-Engineer). Title
track "Little Light" is among a set of guitar songs
that reveal a different sort of Allison Crowe's writerly reflections in
music. "Happy People", like such earlier songs as
Crowe's own, "Skeletons and Spirits", seduces with a
bright melody coating more acid observations. Strong and gentle poetics
of "Hold Back" warm us by a fire kindled in the '70s by Joni
Mitchell. "Choose to Be" bridges the piano sound of
Allison's "This Little Bird" songs with her new tunes.
Bob Dylan's ramblin' shoes lead to a less restless farewell, as the
album closes with "Wedding Song" - Crowe's sweetest,
rootsiest, love song to date.
The interpretations on this collection are: "Time After Time"
- originally a hit for that most unusual girl, Cyndi Lauper - Allison,
a child of the '80s gives her impassioned take, live (Bastion City
Mobile's Scott LittleJohn recording this, the same night as "Angels");
"Running
for Home", is a cover of the Matthew Good Band, and one of the
songs Allison has performed since her teens; and, by way of the Righteous
Babe, Ani DiFranco, comes Allison's vocal-guitar nod to the great
peace-loving bard, Phil Ochs - "When I'm Gone".
"Can't be singing louder than the guns when I'm gone, so I guess
I'll have to do it while I'm here."
Monday, April 7 ~ "Little Light" shines
Remarkably, on a weekend when birth of an album was not in mind, Allison Crowe's newest song collection, "Little Light", has come together!
I've been listening to these songs all morning. One of the world's most vital songwriters and live performers again proves it, magically, with:
Northern Lights
Angels
Disease
Time After Time
Little Light
Happy People
Hold Back
Choose to Be
Running for Home
When I'm Gone
Wedding Song
More word on this release coming. Tour details also in da woiks!
Monday, March 24 ~ "An' for every hung up person in the whole wide universe"
It's a mighty long time since another side of Bob Dylan had us gaze
upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Decades, too, since there was
blood on the tracks. The "idiot wind", though, is still
blowing like a circle around our skulls.
Allison Crowe is a new truth-seeker. She's a writer of social
conscience. One who believes in the power of music.
"To sing is to love and affirm, to fly and soar, to coast into the
hearts of the people who listen, to tell them that life is to live,
that love is there, that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists,
and must be hunted for and found," wrote Joan Baez, musician and
plenty more, when she was near the same age Allison Crowe is now.
't'is high purpose, evermore today, "as we replace marble with
plastic".
The body of work this young Canadian artist is creating is remarkable
and varied. Through a repertoire numbering dozens of original songs,
she's fulfilling her stated raison d'etre, making music that is
"Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real. True."
Lyrics
to Disease - in journal form
In a concert review this month, Jan DeGrass of the Coast Reporter
notes: "In another piece, Crowe savaged the piano with a
fierceness that turned our spines to noodles. The song was dedicated to
a woman who gave a classical piano performance seen on YouTube
only to find that her web audience offered tasteless and ignorant jokes
in return. Don't sugar coat it, Allison."
No Mother Hubbard soft soap here. The song, Disease, is
stimulating social commentary. (Serving as inspiration to an online
discussion of 'great art' and the nature of its creation.) While
unchanged lyrically, the song has grown more steeled musically through
its life and release: "Striking for the gentle, striking for the
kind."
Captured in its raging glory, serendipitously on International
Women's Day, March 8, 2008, also a fun date of Turtle Recording
Studios 20th Anniversary Party in White Rock, B.C., Canada - by
Engineer and Producer, Turtle's Larry Anschell - and Co-engineered by
Brad Graham:
Disease
Press Quotes - A Collection (click here)
Click each date for earlier 2008 news:
03/10 ~ Best times for "most Canadian Canadian"
02/14 ~ Happy Valentine's Day!!
02/01 ~ Revolution Rock: Allison Crowe in 2008
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