In a recent interview, Marissa Nadler was critical of female artists who sound more like little girls than full grown women.
Nadler named no names but was probably thinking primarily of Joanna Newsom. I have a feeling Dana Falconberry would also be in her sights because the Michigan born songstress has the same ethereal air of being ill at ease in the adult world and of seeking alternative sustenance in the world of nature.
On Cormorant Falconberry declares "I am a snail shell. I am an oak leaf" while in Dolomite she dreams of becoming a bird and, in distinctly Newsom-like tones, proclaims "Oh my dear I have awoken some long slumbering thing".
In Leona, she is lost in the woods and like a distressed (and articulate) damsel cries "Oh my curdling heart, soar from the start / Oh my careering blood, drown me in my own flood"
The album publicity emphasizes the enraptured escapism that fires her muse highlighting the fact that she retreated to a series of remote areas of the Ozarks, Lincoln National Forest, the Buffalo River, and White Sands, New Mexico. The songs were also inspired by her late grandmother Isabelle.
Just as the aforementioned cormorant is unique in being able to dive up to 45 meters underwater, Falconberry sets out to explore hidden depths or, as her PR team put it, to map out "an intangible terrain like a spiritual cartographer".
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Ironically, however, it is the shorter, less wordy songs like Calling Mountain and Powerlines that work best not least because they give more space to Medicine Bow, her excellent backing band: Christopher Cox (bass), Gina Dvorak (banjo, guitar), Karla Manzur (keys), Matthew Shepherd (percussion), and Lindsey Verrill (cello).
Critics use adjectives like 'delicate' and 'intricate' a lot when describing records like this and New York Times have labelled Falconberry's sound as “rusticated chamber music".
There are some gorgeous melodies on this album but in the absence of some real fire in the belly, the deliberately dreamlike and unworldly qualities quickly become an irritant.
Dana Falconberry's website
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