Rio En Medio

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I haven't felt up to devoting too much time to this thing lately, in spite of the ridiculous amount of "free" time I have by not having a 9-5 job. An older version of myself is so ANGRY right now that I'm not using all of this time to write or read; I can remember times where I'd resent having to go to work because I'd always inevitably seem to leave in the middle of an idea, or at the beginnings of a poem. I wish I could tap into that former inspiration at will! I wonder what sort of poetry I'd be writing now if I was feeling inspired?

I can say one thing about right now, though: I've been discovering great new music left and right. I'm discovering bands that I'm mystified I didn't know about sooner. I'm discovering music that is renewing my faith that I live in a creative, thinking world. But my hands down favorite of every new artist or band I've stumbled across over the past two weeks is Rio En Medio, a relatively new artist on Devendra Banhart's Gnomonsong label.

Rio En Medio is also known as Danielle Stech-Homsy, a New Mexico born poet, singer & ukulelist. She sometimes lifts her lyrics entirely from poets like John Ashbery and French surrealist Paul Eluard, which you might pick up on if so inclined, but somehow it doesn't take away from the personal feeling of the album, particularly if you keep in mind that most of these songs were recorded with no intention of ever releasing them. Every hand clap, whisper and deconstructed sample was done by Stech-Homsy herself. To me it sounds like ghost's music, that sort of ambient, other worldly, quasi-electronic liquid sound that seems to be catching on with more and more independent female musicians lately. I suppose it would be easy to pass her over considering that it seems like she's being marketed as the "new" Joanna Newsom (ANOTHER beautiful elf woman wearing old prairie dresses in the woods with her ears sticking slightly out of her long, flowing hair?), but musically that's pretty far from the truth. I love me some Joanna Newsom, but Rio En Medio stands entirely alone here. If you dive into her music image blind and take it for exactly what it is, it's sheer, crystallized beauty might just win you over.

Although I love "The Bride of Dynamite" as a single entity, album closer "Liberte" (a haunting eight minute long musical version of the Eluard poem of the same name) is probably my favorite. The slight static of the various samples in the background (like crowd rumbling and a telephone being dialed) thrown together with the bells and Stech-Homsy's dirgy, dead-pan vocal is a perfectly complete package for the poem itself (one english translation can be read here), which is absolutely gorgeous. The idea of musical interpretation of poetry as recorded by other poets is incredibly interesting to me- I wish there was more of it out there.

"Tiger's Ear" is probably the most accessible song on the album and also the one that reminds me most of aforementioned Newsom. But when even the album's most accessible song has background whistling as a major musical component you know you've got something truly unique on your hands.

My second favorite song on the album, "Everyone's Someone's," is as creepy as it is strangely warming. The lyrics are amazing, a mother urging her grown child not to go to war. She tells him the story of how she and the child's father ran away together in a boat, surviving only because their love was blessed. The narrator then cautions her grown son not to be influenced by other people telling him that war is justified. She reminds him that "everyone is someone's sweet little baby" and adds "you were not meant for that, you were meant for love." The only percussion is hand clapping throughout, with samples of babies laughing at the end. Perfect.

Mostly I love her choice of sounds, and specifically where she chooses to put them. It's not flashy and doesn't seem like it's done mainly to be "experimental" or "weird" - everything seems to be exactly in it's place, regardless of how odd or unconventional the instrument or sample she uses might seem. If you like artists like CocoRosie, Joanna Newsom, Marissa Nadler, etc.- PLEASE pick up this album. Rio En Medio is honestly a rare light at the end of a long tunnel of mediocre "new folk" artists.

Rio En Medio @ Myspace
Interview w/ Danielle at Identity Theory