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By Dennis Cook
From the wade-in-the-water cover to the creepy fairy tale mood inside, this stirs up an otherworldly haze. Our feet slip on her moss covered rambles, and we fall like a feather carried on the warm breeze pouring from en Medio's copper-coated throat.
It is no surprise that the high-minded shamans at Gnomonsong - the fiercely independent label run by Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic (Vetiver) - should release this beguiling debut. Past finds like Jana Hunter and Feathers show they've got a highly developed nose for unique talents. Rio en Medio (the performing name of Danielle Stetch Homsy likely derived from a hiking trail from her birthplace of New Mexico) croons with the chilling power of Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses, Belly) and Josephine Foster. Her beautifully fractured vision recalls the Kate Bush of The Dreaming and Never for Ever, though en Medio possesses a gentle streak Bush never tapped into. She has an almost subliminal power to charm and convince. When she tells us everyone's little baby was meant for love it sounds right, washing away the ugliness of harsh reality with a cooling, healing faithfulness, delivered over a sleepy flamenco handclap bed that furthers the potency of this Over-soul lullaby.
A regular performer in NYC clubs, en Medio employs a charmingly peculiar array of instruments including ukulele, harmonium, Indian banjo, samplers, and assorted exotic percussion. She's aided here by underground pros Tim Fite, David Coulter, Sierra Casady (CocoRosie), and Cabic, who also helped produce the album with ever-golden studio marvel Thom Monahan (Pernice Brothers). The results are remarkably ear-tugging, noises big and small cajoling us further and further along her very personal highway. We hear the squeak of strings, wood caressed, a music box spring wound tight and uncoiled with a dancer's finesse. The rhythms are dub-deep but never reggae flavored, a tone from inside the Earth calling to the open sky.
The Bride of Dynamite belongs to no time. It could be folk music from another land or another planet. Call it effervescent rock that beats all the paper and scissors the kids can throw at it. Or maybe it's the Brothers Grimm as interpreted by Laurie Anderson's kid sister. Like most far-left-of-center creations, listeners are bound to hear vastly different things when this flutters across the room. That we're consistently compelled to listen is what makes her the inheritor of a legacy begun by Patty Waters, Judee Sill, and other lost, lovely ladies of the canyon.
JamBase | California
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