Shannon Wright, a gifted singer songwriter from New York, used to front
the Crowsdell and then fled the city for the rural setting of a North Carolina
farm. The Crowsdell recorded Dreamette (Big Cat, 1995)
and Within The Curve Of An Arm (Big Cat, 1997) in an alternative
roots-rock vein. Wright's solo music couldn't be farther removed from that
genre. Her delicate ballads boast sober, hushed chamber-pop arrangements.
On Flight Safety (Touch & Go, 1999) she plays most of the instruments
herself. Born out of disillusionment with the music industry and friends at
large, the songs radiate a suspended mood of disbelief and hope. Wright
strums the enchanted lullaby Floor Pile like Donovan telling one of his
fairy tales or Leonard Cohen humming one of his tender dirges, while austere
piano and cello embellish the background.
The doleful blues of All These Things relies on waltzing circus music and
nickelodeon organ lines.
This manner leads to surreal epigrams such as Hobos On Parade,
in which her life impressions are transfigured into oneiric flashes.
While a few of the songs are quiet odes to solitude (Twilight Hall),
Wright's confessions are never wails for the sake of wailing. She has
strength and vision, and her songs are more like soundscapes that she travels,
in her quest for a sheltering shore:
over the martial Neil Young pace of You're The Cup Wright's refrain
soars with almost religious overtones amidst menacing noises.
The closing Heavy Crown has the grace and lightness of renaissance music
while her voice delves deep into her soul almost in a trance and her hermetic
lyrics acquire a hymn-like quality.
Maps Of Tacit (Touch & Go, 2000) indulges in the most personal and
conceptual aspects of that style, and sounds colder to the ear.
The tracks sound more like impressionistic vignettes than stories, vignettes of
narrow, dark, desert rooms in which Wright performs an excruciating
ceremony of self-destruction.
Absentee, Ribbons Of You, Dirty Facade
limp along like devastating hallucinations that suck away all the energy
from the notes.
Wright pens nightmarish, emphatic, almost expressionistic music
(Fences Of Pales could be in a Brecht-Weill theater piece,
Flask Welder could be a Nico ode)
that one cannot easy swallow at face value but is forced to interpret
metaphorically.
The reprise of Heavy Crown is even more abstract and funereal than the
original version.
Wright is a sphinx that utters (musical and lyrical) riddles that probably
require a lifetime to decipher.
A stronger instrumental background makes Dyed In The Wool (Touch & Go, 2001)
a far more disturbing work and her most personal statement yet.
Wright has become an accomplished pianist and a skilled coreographer
of solemn ballads.
It is not surprising that she ends up sounding like Nico. The German sphinx'
howling is at the heart of simple and terrible compositions like
Less Than A Moment and The Sable. A German accent permeates
the drunken cabaret music of the
the mournful, chilling You Hurry Wonder.
Like Nico, Wright has reached back in her past for inspiration.
The Hem Around Us is built around nostalgic music box music, the ideal
launching pad for her quiet whisper
(except for soaring suddenly in an emphatic
Siouxsie Sioux-ian scream).
Similarly, Bells is a tender elegy that recalls Christmas carols.
Wright surpasses her models when she lets her classical vein flow freely,
as in the theatrical, operatic lied Hinterland, mercilessly pummeled by a
fatalistic piano figure, or in
the instrumental Colossal Hours,
a horror soundtrack for a lonely day that is adorned by
the grave notes of a grand piano and the martial bangs of psychedelic
percussions, or in Vessel For A Minor Malady, virtually
a classical sonata for piano and strings.
Surly Demise successfully merges
the sensibility of Leonard Cohen and the stateliness of a baroque aria.
While these are the most poignant moments, they always sound too short.
Wright seeems ashamed of her artistic achievements.
The lengthy Dyed In The Wool is less successful, as it sounds
overwrought and strained, as does the depressed Method Of Sleeping
(announced by floating strings and distorted keyboards).
Dispensing with her rock roots,
Wright has found a truly magical formula, halfway between folk music and
classical music.
A Junion Hymn (Grey Flat, 2003)
Wright continued her progression towards more complex sounds with
Over The Sun (Touch & Go, 2004), on which the lyrics are far less
important than the instrumental score. Songs like the hysterical
With Closed Eyes and the insecure
Throw A Blanket Over The Sun pin Wright's soul against a
loose aggregate of raw emotions that cause all sorts of turbulences to
the song structure.
Menacing and unstable, bordering on the psychotic, Wright's music gains
in power what it loses in subtlety.
Tiersen/ Wright (Ici d'Ailleurs, 2005), a collaboration with
French soundtrack composer Yann Tiersen, is a collection of austere
chamber lieder. It begins on an imposing tone with the
martial and funereal No Mercy For She and the
accordion-driven Dragon Fly that sounds like a broken carillon,
but the neurotic piano mazurka Sound The Bells is already a half-baked
idea, and the hard-pounding Dried Sea and
the blues-rock jam While You Sleep go overboard,
despite showing the versatility of the experiment.
The neoclassical elegance is recovered for the catchy Ode To A Friend
and the closing folk dance of Pale White.
Let In The Light (Touch And Go, 2007) comes through as a collection of
eclectic piano lieder,
projecting a stronger sense of intellectual and psychological nudity.
Some songs stand out for their original constructs
(Defy This Love that sounds like piano music for a Brecht-ian cabaret,
St Pete that is reminiscent of Patti Smith's fiery howl over a martial hard-boogie rhythm,
Don't You Doubt Me that revolves around a hypnotic, bluesy guitar pattern,
the neo-classical tourbillion of Steadfast and True);
but mostly Wright entertains with simplicity, not complexity
(the ethereal
Donovan-esque lullabies When the Light Shone Down and You Baffle Me,
the Beatles-esque melodic progression of Idle Hands,
even the vehement
Warren Zevon-ian
rant of Everybody's Got Their Own Part to Play).
She certainly never overdoes. She makes the smallest effort to deliver
her meaning, and then quietly retreats. She is a unique combination of
a Zen monk, a German cabaret singer and a modern American woman.
Given the nature of the music, the bass and the drums seem somehow out of
context. Other than to sell the album in the "rock" section, sometimes it is not
clear what purpose they serve.
This is a lightweight work. Wright does not seem to have spent much time
trying to carve the masterpiece of her life, but rather she seems to have
laid down a few easy songs. It is proof of her musical skills that the
result is far from mediocre.
A bristly, sour sound infiltrates
the 30-minute album Honeybee Girls (2009), notably the
Sonic Youth-esque noise-rock Trumpets on New Year's Eve.
The gentle, folkish songs (Tall Countryside, Black Rain) tend to be lame and uninspired, only marginally redeemed by
atmopsheric elegies like Honeybee Girls and Asleep.
Only Father achieves a haunting, otherworldly dimension.
One wishes that she had invested more in
Sympathy on Challen Avenue, an
epic piano-based rumination
a` la Billy Joel and Don McLean.
Secret Blood (2010) is instead excessively subdued
(Violent Colors, On The Riverside), despite
occasional bursts of noise-punk-rock (Fractured, Commoners Saint).
Dim Reader, with soaring melody and gothic arrangement, borders on dream-pop, and the
slow-motion Merciful Secret Blood Of A Noble Man could have been a
Cowboy Junkies number.
But too much of the rest sounds like generic filler.
In Film Sound (2013), another mixed bag,
leans towards the neurotic side of her art, notably with
the hard-rocking, Led Zeppelin-ian Noise Parade
and the rowdy boogie Tax The Patients, but it also contains the
bluesy Who's Sorry Now?
and
one of her most moving piano elegies, Bleed.
The eight-song Division (2017) marks a quantum leap forward in
terms of arrangement.
Past the stately Division, the album unleashes the
operatic grandeur The Thirst.
Synth lines and drum-machine decorate the catchy ballad Accidental.
If the ghostly Seemingly dwells in immense introversion,
the whispered neoclassical piano lied Soft Noise soars into a bombastic hymn, and the the dreamy, feathery Lighthouse (Drag us in) turns into
a frenzied piano sonata.
The most touching moment comes perhaps when
a trembling street organ propels the agonizing singalong of Iodine.
The seven-song Providence (2019) marked instead a retreat into
the most spartan and introverted of formats: just piano and voice.
The whispered piano elegy Fragments sets the tone.
Her multitracked vocals engineer a crescendo of angst in These Present Arms.
The solemn meditation of Close The Door,
the more melodic Somedays
and especially the melancholy trance of Disguises (with gentle electronic echoes) plumb the depths of her soul.
The piano solo Providence is a marvel of cascading anxiety and tenderness.
Rarely has a songwriter evoked Beethoven's sonatas in her songs.
