Angela Correa
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Angela Correa

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Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Spendid Zine - Reviews"

There's an inescapably seductive quality to Angela Correa's songs; despite the fact that every song she writes is downtempo and melancholy, she has produced forty-five minutes of mellowness rather than full sedation. Correatown is ten beautiful, earthy tunes, stripped bare musically and emotionally, that trudge along at the pace of a wounded deer. Only Correa's endlessly soothing voice and the strength of her bittersweet songs allows her to avoid the pitfalls of a "downer" album.

Correa hails from San Diego, a town that boasts an impressive collection of singer-songwriters: Liz Janes, J Turtle, Castanets (Ray Raposa) and that Jason Mraz fellow all compete with her for coffee shop stage time. Maybe it's the fact that San Diego's weather is exactly the same every day, but all of these artists, Correa included, attack their music as if they're on the tail end of a vicodin bender. When you hear the droning organ on "Hardship to Be You", you'll realize that time simply isn't an issue for Correa. Similarly, "Mercurial Heart"'s sparse guitars and "Night Light"'s wispy vocals suggest a world where the seasons never change, the hours don't pass and the only causes for concern are heartache and depression -- two things Correa understands well.


-- Philip Stone - Splendid


"LES SHELLEYS, Together for old time's sake"

“It's a name I've always loved,” confides romantic singer-songwriter Tom Brosseau. “In elementary school, I had a friend, a girl in the second grade, and her name was Shelley.”


It's early on a Sunday morning, but Brosseau and musical partner Angela Correa are up and ready to talk about their new project, The Shelleys. Both are established solo artists—especially Brosseau, who has been played on influential college radio station KCRW, and was recently featured in the station's “Next Up” concert series.


The new collaboration, however, allows them to interpret a wide range of material from other tunesmiths. Essentially, The Shelleys is a cover band by two top-notch San Diego artists.


Although now based in Los Angeles, Brosseau spent most of the past four years as a perennial in the local coffeehouse circuit, and was introduced to Correa's music by iconic crooner Gregory Page.


“I first heard her music when she was doing avante-garde recordings on a four-track cassette recorder,” Brosseau recalls. “Gregory turned me on to that, and he kept saying that Angela and I would be great as a duo.” Fate—and a need to pool monetary resources for recordings—brought the two together.


“Angela borrowed my mini-disc player to record her first effort. She asked me to sing on a couple of her songs. The sound of the two voices together and the fact that we both enjoyed the same range of music made it a natural progression.”


Laughing, Correa clarifies: “I kept pestering him to record more duets.”


For the last couple of months, the duo has been road-testing the material, preparing to unveil their debut album, Popular Songbook.


“The album came out of songs we had already started performing, in the folk tradition,” says Correa. “For this disc we were looking for more obscure material that we could rearrange and make our own.”


“It's looking like it's going to be a series,” Brosseau adds. “The first album that we have is folk music. We go as contemporary as John Prine, or as traditional as Leadbelly. We tried to pick a couple of obscure ones by Bob Dylan, but that was pretty hard, because everybody already knows even the bootleg stuff.” (They settled on “Billy” from Dylan's soundtrack to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.)


The pair will continue their solo work, but they say they're already finishing up a second Shellys album. “The next one is 1950s pop music,” Brosseau explains. “That's how we got on the kick of singing together, doing things by Kay Starr or Les Paul & Mary Ford and so on.”


Correa suggests that the simple musical backdrop of two guitars and two voices brings out the best in the vintage tunes they've chosen, like Nino Tempo & April Stevens' “Deep Purple,” written in 1934.


“I personally enjoy music that's stripped down and bare bones,” she says. “Great songs don't need all the bells and whistles to stand out. The tunes and lyrics can carry the moment. I have a real passion for lo-fi sound, along the lines of the K Records aesthetic. And there is such a huge, untapped wealth of songs that lend themselves to this sort of recording.”


Brosseau realizes getting a larger audience for arcane songs is an uphill battle in today's music scene—especially for tender folk artists without Hot Topic appeal—but that's not a consideration with this project.


“We're not concerned about getting on a label, or dealing with any of that sort of thing right now,” he says. “We just hope to get people enthusiastic about the old songs again.”

by Ken Smith and Scoop Stevens - San Diego City Beat April 2004


Discography

Correatown - 2005 self-released
Murder Ballads & Other Songs EP - 2004 self-released
Red Room Songs - 2003 self-released
Les Shelleys Volumes 1 & 2 (with Tom Brosseau) - 2004 self-released

singles in rotation:
Super Paper Airplanes - KCRW 2005
Savvy Young Punks - KCRW 2005
Mercurial Heart - WFMU, KDVS, WMBR 2005
Nightlight - WERS 2005
In My Time of Dying (Les Shelleys/Tom Brosseau) - KEXP 2005

Only A Word - WERS, KAOS, WFMU, WMBR, WBRS 2003

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Recently nominated by the LA WEEKLY as BEST NEW ARTIST for the LA Weekly Music Awards, since arriving to Los Angeles just one short year ago Angela Correa has been making a powerful impression with a resonant vintage Gibson guitar, her fairy-tale story songs & her mesmerizing voice & stage presence. She receives regular airplay on one of the nation's most influential taste-making stations KCRW, where Weekend Becomes Eclectic DJ Anne Litt championed her latest self-released album "Correatown." Angela Correa also gets regular airplay around the country on various stations including KEXP, WERS, WMBU, WFMU, KALX, KXLU, KDVS, WXPN (to name just a handful) without any press/publicity push. Clearly, there is something about the music that turns people on. She has shared the stage with John Doe, Rambling Jack Elliot, Calvin Johnson, The Blow, Wolf Colonel, Trespasser's William, Sam Phillips, Jill Sobule, Glen Phillips & has toured solo across the country playing at venues such as Passim in Boston, and King King or Largo in Los Angeles.

CORREATOWN is the first album by Angela Correa to be released on Bed Pan Records, a tiny independent label in San Diego. Initially, the songs were meant to be a humble little demo of one takes- Angela just playing & singing a natural performance. However, after listening to the songs producer Gregory Page decided to paint in a little color between the spaces of music and lyric Angela had created. Most of the songs chosen for the album were actually the first take. The result is a collection of songs that are intimate & sincere, yet loose and organic in texture.

Haunting, genuine, beautiful & sparse are words most often used to describe the music of the small town girl from Northern Californian. Her music skirts genres; it is an amalgam of early American folk, country blues & a certain lo-fi indie rock temperament. Influenced as much by Elisabeth Cotton, Bessie Smith & Jack Elliot as the likes of Beat Happening, PJ Harvey & Neil Young, Angela flirts with traditional folk by telling rich stories brought to life with real melodies, distinctive arrangement & contemporary topics. She is both literate and whimsical, and the nuance & subtlety of her voice is what most intrigues listeners.

"We just got Angela Correa's mysterious self-released CD, Correatown, in the mail and fell in love with her hooky balladry and vulnerable, slightly twangy vocals. (Note: We're not talking about Amy Correia.) You read it here first: Angela Correa, who just moved here from San Diego, is going to be a much loved L.A. artist in about 10 minutes."
- Kate Sullivan & Falling James, LA Weekly
Picks of the Week April 8, 2005

More press quotes from her debut album, Red Room Songs:

The sparse, uncluttered arrangements; her edgy sometimes disturbing lyrics; & her tendency to write songs filled with pain & heartache are captivating." San Diego Troubadour, April 2003

Angela Correa plays the most delicate violence you've ever heard. Red Room Songs, the singer/songwriter's self-produced, self-released debut, is full of blood, ache, heartbreak and a knowing thoughtfulness that is reflected in every note of the singer's fluttering drawl. The CD spent weeks on KSDT radios top ten albums list, and still makes regular rotation... Correa is at once traditional and contemporary, visceral and cerebral. Her words are about sex and murder, and they are sung by a person who has hashed through these topics on an analytical level. - UCSD Triton, June 2003

Folky, country, indie ... whatever man, it's just plain beautiful. - Las Vegas City Life, June 2003