The Sweet Lowdown
May
Bluegrass/Folk
Produced by Adrian Dolan
Released: November 2012
www.thesweetlowdown.ca

The Sweet Lowdown’s second CD, May, is a pure delight. Released in 2012, it won the 2013 Island Roots Album of the Year award for the Victoria, BC-based band. The group consists of banjo and guitar player Shanti Bremer, originally from Olympia, WA, German-born Miriam Sonstenes on fiddle, and native Victorian Amanda Blied on guitar, who trade lead and harmony vocals with a light touch reminiscent of Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Each has enough songwriting, vocal and instrumental talent to stand alone, but together they create a synergy of honest vocals, tight three-part harmonies and masterful fiddle, banjo and guitar playing. Their songs convey the soul of mountain music through the contemporary framework of new folk and bluegrass.
 
There are twelve tracks on this CD. The ten original songs are fresh and engaging, with writing credits divided evenly around the group. Vocals build from solo or duo to full harmony on cuts such as “Please Take Me Home,” “Let It Go,” “What Goes Up,” and “Drink It Down” (with an environmental theme inspired by a documentary on water rights). Most of the singing is clear enough to understand, but close listening does not always reveal all the words. Thankfully, the six-panel foldout includes a booklet tucked in one pocket with all of the lyrics and brief notes on the four instrumentals. Sonstenes creates a toe-tapping groove on her original fiddle tunes, trading leads with Bremer’s banjo on old-time and Celtic-flavored instrumentals such as “Big Wave” and “Inza and Liam’s Jig.” Bremer’s composition skills are no less impressive with the exotic melodic turns of her tune “Lucknow,” named for a city in India. Her beautiful title track, “May,” starts with a relaxed solo banjo motif, moves into lead and harmony traded with the fiddle, then breaks into a driving beat in a minor key before resolving with a quiet, lyrical ending. Two traditional tunes that round out the album show the band’s ability to play straight-ahead bluegrass on “Reuben’s Train,” or harmonize with a quieter folk sound in “Sail Away Ladies.”
 
Some of my favorite lyrics include:
 
“It’s a long way to the places that we used to know /
All the empty rooms and the hours waiting by the phone /
Why can’t we let it go, /
What you and I both know, /
Why can’t we let it go.” /
(from Let It Go by Miriam Sonstenes)
 
“Asleep at night /
While demons stay awake and sell our rights /
Before we wake, and when we do /
It’s to the store and on the shelf we see /
Their good night’s work. /
 
When the rain ceases to fall /
And the winter doesn’t come at all /
And the taps won’t give you a glass, /
Save us, save us.” /
 (from "Drink It Down" by Shanti Bremer)
 
 
“Blue are the midnight skies /
On those the longest nights /
When up the hills we go /
Ride snow back down
 
Snow lit the night like day /
Day broke above blue lakes /
Glaciers they shone like gold /
Behold the sun”
(from "What Goes Up" by Amanda Blied)
 
Heidi Muller
December 2013
 

​Gloria Darlings
Come Home to Me
Self-produced
Released June 2013
www.thegloriadarlings.com

This CD is a charming and delightful listen through nine originals and two covers by Seattle-based Melissa Jane Pandiani (Pandi) and Amelia Boksenbaum (Milly Raccoon). Recorded at Empty Sea Studio by Michael Connolly, who also plays upright bass, the production is true to their performances with Pandi on guitar, Milly on fiddle and mandolin, and both on crystal clear lead and harmony vocals. 

It’s remarkable how well matched these two women are in both their songwriting and vocal skills. They both write creative, whimsical songs in a blend of Americana, folk and old-style country with a hint of old-time Appalachian and bluegrass. Their harmonies are sometimes as close as the Everly Brothers and other times move apart unexpectedly. Their ethereal voices are perfect for their quirky and interesting lyrics that range from reporting on the ups and downs of love to introducing mythical characters.

One of my favorites is Pandi’s upbeat song, Ghost Girl:
    “Fresh off the train from heartbreak city, as a ghost girl I come into Nashville town /
     First outlaw I see comin’ with his licorice lover’s lies, /
     I’ll draw my pistol and I’ll cut him down… /
     My heart it bleeds, can’t get no sleep, I must remind myself to breathe now and then /
     I’m dustin’ off my knees and I’m headed east, and I’m never gonna hurt like this again.”

No Buying Time by Milly sets uncommon lyrics to an old-fashioned country melody:
    “I’m an animal, so stay away, don’t lie your lies to me /
     I’m an alien and I’m leaving soon, there’s no buying time with me… /
     I’ve got hidden swords all over me, I’m a fortress of disease /
     I’ve got hidden songs and haunting dreams, I’m gone so mote it be.”

Little Bunny by Milly is a barnburning instrumental featuring the fiddle in a minor key with some interesting chord progressions. Jack of the Wood by Pandi is a happy, hoedown kind of song driven again by Milly’s old-timey fiddle bow. They even break into Whiskey Before Breakfast right in the middle of it. 
    “Well he opened up his hand and released a firefly /
     Took me to his dwelling up along the mountainside /
     Asked me for forever and I wondered if I could, then he cast his shade on another maid, Now we call him Jack of the Wood.”

Of the two covers, my favorite is the Louvins’ Hide and Seek. The vocals are sweet and high-energy, and the guitar, mandolin, fiddle and bass keep our toes tapping. 

The Gloria Darlings have played at festivals and concerts and busked nationwide. Their sound is a little raw instrumentally, reminiscent of a street show. Milly’s strength is on the fiddle, seeming more comfortable playing leads on it than on mandolin, where there are issues of timing and leaving lead phrases not quite complete. Pandi is a strong guitar strummer and a smooth fingerpicker. This new CD should put these two artists on the map with their endearing, down-home and innovative music.

          Heidi Muller 
          December 2013

Stefanie Robbins
Welcome Her Back
Self-Published, 2016
www.stefanierobbins.com

I've traded notes on songwriting with Seattle singer-songwriter Stefanie Robbins at the Beacon Hill Songwriters' Circle, so she invited me to her CD release concert and asked me to write a review of Welcome Her Back. Her new album is quite the professional production. She likes a touch of sentimental country slide behind her big voice and effective chord changes, and the polished band obliges. You can hear bits of Carole King, Stevie Nicks, and Dolly Parton in Stef's songwriting and Eric Miller's arrangements.

When Stef is anthemic she can sound defiant, as when she celebrates a wilder "her" tucked inside herself in the title song Welcome Her Back. Other times she's rhapsodic. I'm guessing that Eric Miller's detailed arrangements bring out her grander side, as in the gorgeous overdubbed outro at the end of Carried Away, where multiple Stefanies emulate the effect of letting herself tumble in and out of love. I'm not sure, however, that Eric's efforts can find much new in Let My Cards Show (an image trademarked by Kenny Rogers), or sort out the planetary metaphor of Constant One (it's hard to improve upon John Donne imagining his spouse the "fixed foot" of a compass that "makes me end where I begun.")

​Stef trying to push questions out of her mouth as fast as she can while young Sedona is still there to hear them. Sedona is struggling to fend off a hard loneliness that Stef recognizes. Perhaps she remembers perfectly well her own impatience with such nosy questions just a few years back while she was on the street. Yet now she's in the position of asking Sedona those very same questions because she cares about her, worries that she will be hurt or disappear. And in songwriting as well, the more intimately the song yields to the complex gestures of the singer's spoken voice. That's what Joni Mitchell was doing when she began a song with the spoken phrase "No regrets, Coyote" ― turning that sassy line into a moment of theater. I hope that Stef will continue to feel comfortable writing songs in her own personal voice, and peppering them to taste with remarks directed at particular people.

The night of her CD release show, I asked Stef "Where are we welcoming you back from?" and she answered "Myself." That's an intriguing answer.

   - Hank Davis (edited for brevity; full review here)