Lonely Drifter Karen, Grass Is Singing
Clearly Karenic drifts from Capital of Austria to Goteborg to Barcelona, gypsying through floorshow and twinkly avant-pop. Tanja Frinta sings in a henry Sweet and funny story stress, accompanied by a Mallorcan piano player and an Italian Drummer. The songs ar as pan-European: Wistful and serene cabaret hoarseness gives way to off-kilter umpah ballads. Frinta's charming melodies owe much to the musicals of her youth and Weimar floor show, and ar a perfect tense familiar in her lyrics. Stories almost owls and carrousel horses and her take up on falling in love in French capital via the tale of artificer 'Professor Dragon' display her fecund vision.
But Lonely Vagrant Karen draw you in to their magical world mainly and gratifyingly with good euphony. The arrangements by piano player Marc Meliá Sobrevias make the to the highest degree of pianoforte and subtle percussion (courtesy of Giorgio Menossi) and later, Wurlitzer and music box, creating a rich landscape on which the stories are played out. Reckon True Desire or Climb whizz along fast over a little mound, or imagine trotting along to La Hierba Canta.
Sometimes the grass sings a familiar birdcall. Here are many snatches of tunes and sounds used elsewhere, simply the sonic human race created by LDK is oceanic abyss and robust sufficiency to possess them. Frinta's spokesperson tin can sometimes go irritation - a spot lonesome and lackluster - merely like Joanna Newsome or Hanna Hukkelberg on that point is an undeniable and earnest sweetness; you stimulate into it finally. And as in the vocal Casablanca, just as you believe you've had sufficiency the tonal pattern switches and a whole different threshold creaks open up. This is the most enjoyable aspect of this album, it drifts into itself and then come out again. It drifts into fellow territory and then away. And finally it drifts into your dreams and hangs about there, beingness nice and reminding you of things you thought you had forgotten.
