Terese Taylor
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San Francisco-based Terese Taylor is a floating rib of sorts - her idiosyncratic style and sound isn't attached to the flimflam sternum of the music industry. On her second record, The Cryingness of Your Crying When You Cry (Bombsniffing Dog Records), she loosens her oyster clutch to share seven darkly-lacquered, private grains of post-punk-alternative-folk-rock. While her sophomore effort lives in the same world as her 1999 release, TheClothes We Wore Before We Were Married, it exudes more of an intimate glimpse into the black heaviness that Taylor and drummer Rob Johnson are known for. The Cryingness was recorded in two five-hour sessions by student engineers in San Francisco, mixed by Matt Boudreau (mattboudreau.com) and mastered by Michael Romanowski (paulstubblebine.com). The sessions were named Impounded because Charlie, the horn player got arrested on the way to the studio, and Moustache because everyone wore stick-ons to keep themselves playfully entertained. Johnson, who says he's from Massatucky (Colrain, MA) is musically fueled by his pleasant memories of his father shooting things with BB guns, and the unsinkable influence of his Harley For Jesus kind of mother. Hailing from Buffalo, NY, where Genessee Cream Ale flows from every spigot, Taylor's melancholic stories of doom, gloom, old familiar rage and hope were come by honestly. She's a back-porch storyteller that cleverly leaves colossal gaps open to interpretation - as in one of her most lyrically jarring and talked about songs, "Goats for Daddy": "Billy mountain goat/Red ribbon 'round his neck/A present for my dad/ I carry him on my back/I follow it the best/Because I'm the best he's ever had." The album is
a lyrically potent mesh of anomalous feedback molded with
thick, syncopated drumbeats, which are particularly evident
in "Reluctantly", and "Your Hand" - a song Taylor wrote
about a stalker who lived below her in New Mexico, but it
somehow was twisted into the closest she says she's ever
gotten to a love song. Her broad vocal range is eerily
addictive and adaptive as she effortlessly switches gears
from low and perfectly offbeat in "Sweet" to complete
falsetto in one of the records best, "Ghost", which oozes a
mood comparable to sitting in a dingy restaurant with roof
funk dripping down onto a breakfast you didn't want in the
first place. |