cwall99
Addicted Member
This is not normally the type of music I listen to, but I gotta say, this is one beautiful album. What I mean by that is that it's way too show-tunish for me, generally, but the performance on this CD is crazy good. And the recording is beautifully done.
I heard an interview with the lead singer (China Forbes) on NPR a couple years back, and in that interview they played the title track to this album, and immediately I was thinking of my sister-in-law's neighborhood on Manhattan's lower east side.
The whole album has a nice international feel. French. Russian. Italian. German. English. But it comes off as feeling very New York.
Which is kinda strange since the band hails from Portland, OR (though the band's founder and Forbes met at Harvard). I believe everyone in the 12-piece band is a classically trained musician, so the musicianship on the album is exceptional.
The recording itself is tremendous, and, if you like this album, I'd recommend it as a demo disk or an album to use when auditioning speakers. Great dynamics. It shows very little evidence of The Loudness Wars. The CD has so much musical presence I'd put it up against just about any recording on vinyl and feel very confident in it winning some vinly-philes over to the sound of CD.
And Forbes' voice... wow!!! Straight out of 1962. She alternates between the sound you'd expect on a Broadway stage or a smoky nightclub with aplomb. Aplomb? And I didn't even use my thesaurus.
Anyhow, despite the album's straying over to the show tuney side of things, I highly recommend this album.
I heard an interview with the lead singer (China Forbes) on NPR a couple years back, and in that interview they played the title track to this album, and immediately I was thinking of my sister-in-law's neighborhood on Manhattan's lower east side.
The whole album has a nice international feel. French. Russian. Italian. German. English. But it comes off as feeling very New York.
Which is kinda strange since the band hails from Portland, OR (though the band's founder and Forbes met at Harvard). I believe everyone in the 12-piece band is a classically trained musician, so the musicianship on the album is exceptional.
The recording itself is tremendous, and, if you like this album, I'd recommend it as a demo disk or an album to use when auditioning speakers. Great dynamics. It shows very little evidence of The Loudness Wars. The CD has so much musical presence I'd put it up against just about any recording on vinyl and feel very confident in it winning some vinly-philes over to the sound of CD.
And Forbes' voice... wow!!! Straight out of 1962. She alternates between the sound you'd expect on a Broadway stage or a smoky nightclub with aplomb. Aplomb? And I didn't even use my thesaurus.
Anyhow, despite the album's straying over to the show tuney side of things, I highly recommend this album.