Music
The best kept secret in music
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This band has no press
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
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Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
From her first album, 1999s Jon Brion-produced Wishbone, to her fifth, 2004s Afternoon (after which Los Angeles magazine named her best local singer and the LA Weekly anointed her as best songwriter), L.A.-based singer/songwriter Eleni Mandell has been feeling the love from critics and her fellow musicians, who have freely offered their hosannas and hot licks, respectively. Impressive, to be sure, but her career to this point is but a tantalizing extended build-up to Mandells superb new longplayer, The Miracle of Five, which is at once the quintessence and the culmination of her vibrant oeuvre.
From the opening song, the hushed, intimate, Moonglow, Lamp Low, to the closing elegiac ballad Miss Me, the richly nuanced album maintains its mood and subtle momentum, creating a world of its own. This is without question the young artists most coherent album, and her most eloquent, optimistic and beautiful as well. Perfect Stranger puts her in a new light, and on a new level of artistic achievement. Hearing her new album is like hearing this captivating artist for the very first time.
Of the dozen original pieces on The Miracle of Five, Mandell acknowledges, In their way, these are the most positive and hopeful songs Ive written. Theyre not so much about bad relationships or unrequited love as about finding love in the future. So that makes me happy. Ive taken a turnits not so interesting to me to be treated badly anymore. She punctuates the statement with a self-deprecating laugh, as she often does when entering personal territory. For me, thats what stands out the mostthat the songs arent so self-pitying.
In order to optimize this crucial undertaking, Mandell assembled a group of talented and supportive players, including Wilco lead guitarist Nels Cline, X drummer DJ Bonebrake (who plays vibes here), her longtime rhythm section of drummer Kevin Fitzgerald and bassist Ryan Feves, reed player Jeff Turmes (James Harman, Badly Drawn Boy) and keyboardist Andy Kaulkin (Merle Haggard, R.L. Burnside), who also produced. Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) did the mixing.
Mandells singing on the new album is a revelation; never has her conversational alto sounded more present, or more real. Part of it is due to the unorthodox way her vocals were recorded. Determined to get the absolute optimum vocal performances out of his charge, Kaulkin started with Mandells vocals and nylon-string guitar, recorded solo on the basic tracks; the other musicians would overdub their parts afterward, reacting to her finished vocals. Recording all the songs by myself did really make a difference, Mandell confirms. Andy was a little bit hard on me when he felt I wasnt quite getting it, but it was great working with him, just knowing he was really paying attention.
The other breakthrough is the songs themselvessongs in which every note and syllable is palpable with meaning I see Eleni as the missing link between Hoagy Carmichael and Leonard Cohen, says Kaulkin. She belongs to an older tradition of American songwriting. And these new songs are amazingmuch better than anything shes ever written before. Theres a line in every song thats gonna stick with you.
When I hear my songs, I definitely hear the classic American songwriter/showtunes influence, says Mandell. My mother took me to shows as a kid, and I listened to the soundtracks over and over. Then I became very taken with the songs of Gershwin, Porter, Rogers & Hammerstein as interpreted by Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. That was where my parents tastes intersected. My dad turned me on to practically everything elseHank Williams, the Beatles, Bob Dylan.
Mandell describes the largely autobiographical songs of The Miracle of Five with characteristic candorshe cant help telling the truth. The opening Moonglow, Lamp Low, she explains, is a simple song about looking for loveagainand also looking out my window, which is where I wrote it, as the sun was going down. I think it sort of sweetly sets the tone of the record.
Make-Out King, she reveals, is about her new boyfriendwhos no longer the make-out king, Mandell says with a schoolgirl giggle. It was nice to have the hopefulness of the song translated into real life. She pauses. Its always embarrassing to explain my songs because so many of them are kind of literal, she says. The Miracle of Five, for example, refers to a persons fingers. You experience the simplest moment of holding someones hand, and you think, Wow, what a miracle, five fingers holding my hand. See, it is embarrassingmy temperature just went up. My Twin is hopeful, but in a dark waythat somewhere out there is some perfect person for you, but is it possible that he was on his way to meet you, and, as fate would have it, he died in a plane crash? Another laugh. Theres a little positivity in there.
Perfect Stranger, it turns out, is Mandells idea of a
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