Scissor Girls and Azita

The Scissor Girls were a Chicago collective that centered around keyboardist Azita Youssefi and drummer Heather Melowicz. They debuted with the album From The Scissor Girls To The Imaginary Layer on Skeletons (1994). The music on We People Space With Phantoms (Atavistic, 1996), their only album, concocted a schizoid mixture of art punk, funk, avantgarde electronic music and improvised jams. The longest and busiest tracks, In Two Acts and Anti-FUT, evoked everybody from God Is My Co-pilot to early Sonic Youth to John Zorn and Faust.

Here Is The Is Not (Atavistic, 1997) collects two early singles (highly volatile and cartoonish fantasias such as The Mighty I Am) as well as the 10" EP So That You Can Start To See What, which includes what is arguably their masterpiece, the suite Weird 09 (27 minutes).

The Scissor Girls' keyboardist Azita Youssefi had already recorded the solo electronic experiments of Music For Scattered Brains (SG, 1996 - Atavistic, 1997) under the moniker AZ.

Lake of Dracula, formed in 1996 and featuring Heather Melowicz, was another Chicago-based "no wave" band. Lake of Dracula (Skin Graft, 1997) was a wild experiment, with dance beats entangled with ambient drones mutating into prog-rock jams.

Azita (on bass) and two guitarists formed Bride Of No No, that released BONN Appetit (Atavistic, 2000) and the posthumous II (Atavistic, 2003), with a sound that was moving closer to Patti Smith's intellectual rock'n'roll (Gypsy's Song, Wait A Min). Bride Of No No included the female guitarists of Metalux, a free-form electronic-acid-rock outfit that released Fluorescent Towers (2002), Waiting for Armadillo (2004) and Victim of Space (5 Rue Christine, 2005), besides a collaboration with John Weise, Exoteric (Load, 2006).

Azita's second solo album, Enantiodromia (Drag City, 2003), was mainly a display of her original and creative use of the female voice, occasionally reminiscent of Live Skull's Thalia Zadek and of Lydia Lunch. Better End in Time set the standard for the eight-song cycle, straddling the border between cabaret piano lied and piano-based female songwriters of the 1970s. She poured her soul into the vocal parts of Ooh Ooh Johnny, perhaps attempting a range wider than she could muster. Swinging and martial piano figures enhanced On the Road and a trumpet dueted with the sleepy vocals in the bluesy You're Not Very. But the limitations of Azita's voice and the splendor of her piano playing stand out in the seven-minute instrumental Departure of the Boats: while the piano figures are simple, and the dynamics is almost childish, the atmosphere that they create is a pensive blend of Satie and Skryabin. Even the brief closer, Show Theme, also an instrumental, is so much more interesting than the songs.

Azita's third album, Life On The Fly (Drag City, 2004), marked a dramatic departure for both the singer and the pianist, hardly recognizable from her harsh beginnings. Her voice, in particular, has become a fluent, eloquent, melismatic instrument, reminiscent of both torch-ballad singers and lounge entertainers. Wasn't In The Bargain boasts a twisted but majestic melody over syncopated jazzy piano figures and John McEntyre's solid rhythm (Jeff Parker's guitar does a loud and somewhat inopportune solo). That sets the tone for most of the album: an electric quartet of piano, guitar, bass (Matt Lux) and drums accompanying and enriching the singer's emotional experience. Life On The Fly is more danceable and energetic, with an undercurrent of fibrillating organ chords. Just Joker Blues substitutes Parker's guitar for Rob Mazurek's cornet and intones a joyful, rollicking jump-blues number a` la Rip Rig & Panic. Miss Tony combines both Mazurek and Parker for a brisk rave-up propelled by boogie piano (reminiscet of the Stones' Let's Spend The Night Together), southern-rock guitar and Chicago-esque horns. The bluesy ballads, In The Vicinity (with some of the most intriguing instrumental interplay) and Things Without Names (echoing Broadway show tunes), add yet another flavor to a kaleidoscopic collection.
One of the longest tracks, Another Kind of Trade, is a pensive, spare self-elegy, whose most intriguing element is the use of the piano, bent to a calmer, more discrete, reisgned tone while it borrows modesty and emphasis from jazz impressionists Dollar Brand and Kalaparusha.
The slippery Beatles-esque Yours For Today closes the album on a less ambitious note, but it is a misleading ending: Azita is a brainy composer and arranger, who is capable of casting her difficult ideas into simple structures.
As a vocalist, her grammar is a strange hybrid, that references both the austere, erudite style of Robin Holcomb, the painstaking, introverted style of Annette Peacock, the ebullient, youthful style of Neneh Cherry and the philosophical, Mingus-ian period of Joni Mitchell.
The most stunning element of the album, especially given her beginnings, is the consistent level of melodic grace.

The EP Detail From The Mountain Side (Drag City, 2006) documents a score for a theatrical play.

How Will You (Drag City, 2009) crowned her artistic progression with a set of lovely piano-based lullabies that displayed both a mature vocalist (with no need for theatrics), a master tunesmith (with a virtually infinite repertory of melodic nuances) and an adult multi-faceted songwriter a` la Jane Siberry. The solemn I'm Happy, with goosebump-inducing psychedelic crescendoes, evokes the spectres of both Patti Smith and Nico.
At the other end of the spectrum, the romantic elongated phrasing of of How Will You? is supported by an undulating musichall-style tempo, before shiting tempo and ending on a more wistful tone.
In a glaring case of "less is more", Azita scales down the arrangement to the simplest piano strumming to exhale the coiling melody of Away, thereby creating a moment in time that is both stately and tender.
Shifting gear again, Laughter Again limps at a syncopated beat towards a soaring chorus with bluesy electric guitar.
Azita displays her jazz skills in the swinging Things Gone Wrong before venturing into the most spaced-out segment of her show: the seven-minute Come William of free-form moaning and dreamy repetitive piano notes; psychedelic crooning and galactic guitar glissandoes.
The one called Lullbye (as if the others weren't) is whispered with dilated vowels over a martial tempo in a fashion recalling Grace Slick before picking up speed and mutating into a rapturous flamenco.
Returning to the Patti Smith-ian invocation style of the beginning, the lengthy You Really Knew How To Turn It On employs a dreamy but forceful delivery wrapped in a nocturnal atmosphere of guitar and piano.
The closer, Scylla and Charybdis, is also the most spartan and archaic-sounding of them all, basically just a harrowing yodeling lament with acoustic guitar.
Both the narrative and philosophical aspects of her music have reached a melting point, but they express themselves in classically elegant and tidy musical structures.

Azita's Disturbing the Air (Drag City, 2011) is a collection of spartan and stark piano lieder that, inevitably, focus on the lyrics rather than on the music. Mostly the piano figures are simple and repetitive. The singing is also relatively plain and unadorned, probably in order to communicate as directly as possible. The standard is represented by the poignant Then Our Romance and Stars or Fish, with just a touch of strings in Parrots and slightly more theatrical vocals in I Was Indebted (possibly the album's standout). The album closes with two of the most heartfelt compositions: the pensive and dreamy Should I Be?, and the otherworldly Keep Hymn. However, the simplistic piano playing is a burden to the whole affair, detracting from (rather than augmenting) the highly personal confessions. Notably absent are deviations from the standard, moments of artistic madness, eccentric detours. This is as straightforward as she can be.