Molly Thomas

http://www.al.com/entertainment/mobileregister/lspecker.ssf?/base/entertainment/110509300465620.xml


New CD is antidote to Ashlee Simpson


Friday, January 07, 2005I catch the very end of Ashlee Simpson's appearance at the Orange Bowl halftime show and wake up the next day wondering: Was the whole thing as bad as that snippet seemed to me?
Has it really come to this? An ultra-micro-managed property putting on the facsimile of a punk show, right down to the classic "A" for anarchy on the drum kit, in this utterly corporate production? And she's not singing so much as hollering? And hollering badly?
It had to be real. The audience in the stadium didn't even boo when it was over. It just sort of groaned.

And I think: This is not a very promising start to The Year in Entertainment, 2005. Maybe the lip-synching wasn't such a bad thing, compared to the alternative.
So I sit at my desk and I take the wrapper off "Shoot the Sky," Molly Thomas' new CD, and within a few minutes, everything is magically getting better. Because without knowing what I needed, I've found it: A work of wonderful artistic honesty.
If you don't remember Molly, you should. A Mississippi native, she spent some memorable years in Mobile, starting in the mid-'90s as a member of Cold Water Flat, later Slow Moses.
Afterward she continued to perform blues, rock and folk under her own name, solo and as a bandleader. Aside from songwriting and singing, she's known for her skill with the violin, guitar and piano.
She moved to Nashville in 2001, and later released an EP that showed her moving in a soulful direction somewhat comparable to Shelby Lynne; and early in 2004 she backed Matthew Ryan on tour.
Now she gives us "Shoot the Sky." I'll describe the style as straightforward contemporary singer-songwriter, as if that actually is a style. Thomas mixes in alt-country and blue-eyed soul cues, with occasional forays into rock and a good measure of her violin playing.
The album has a slightly gauzy sound, but it's not the production haze often used to cover up the limitations of weak vocalists. It's more the throwback resonance of projects like last year's Jack White-Loretta Lynn album.
There's a lot of pop out there that puts on a pretense of being upbeat but turns out to be self-pitying when you scrutinize it. (Note to self: "Quit scrutinizing pop" might be a really beneficial new year's resolution.)
What Thomas is doing here is exactly the opposite. The music is deep, gentle, flowing, often on the brink of melancholy -- but the sentiment, both in the lyrics and in their delivery, is life-affirming. As in "The Easy Side:"
"get back to the easy side/i wanna be where i don't have to hide/i wanna be where I ain't got no pride/on the easy side -- billy graham on the microphone/tellin' stories that you're not alone/to hungry people/wantin' more and more/sunday news/to get to heaven's door -- the easy side"
Thomas tells me that she plans a local CD release party in February or March; details to come. In the meantime "Shoot the Sky" is available through www.mollythomas.com for $12 plus shipping. It probably will be available soon at Satori and Bay Sound, Thomas says, though it isn't there yet.
It's an album that reflects the challenges of life, and the decision most of us continually make, to keep getting up and meeting them.
And that, folks, is the perfect cure for the blues you get when you start to think that maybe skillfully produced frauds are the best we can expect.
Lawrence F. Specker is the Mobile Register's entertainment reporter. He can be reached by phone at (251) 219-5606; by e-mail as lspecker@mobileregister.com; by fax at (251) 219-5799. Mail notices of upcoming events to him at the Register, P.O. Box 2488, Mobile, AL 36652. - The Mobile Register

Shoot The Sky from Nashville's Molly Thomas arrived out of the blue and hit like a thunderbolt.

I have absolutely no idea who the subject of the withering opening track Blueprint is, only that it's obviously someone who she knows well and I'm just glad it's not me. Her voice rises out of the rubble of a devastated relationship to condemn unequivocally and without mercy.

At times it's almost impossible to hear anything other than Thomas' voice. It's not that she's louder than anything else but the heartache poured into songs like Bad Timing is deafening. They are so intense that listening to them produces the same feelings of guilt as slowing down to rubberneck an accident. The accident analogy doesn't end there because there's a great deal of emotional wreckage attached to the album. It's bittersweet, heavy on the bitter, easy on the sweet.

But Molly Thomas is no little lady, bemoaning her trials and tribulations at the hands of the wrong kind of man. There's a streak of defiance a mile wide in her voice and, as a writer, she kicks where it hurts and with unerring accuracy.

That defiance is epitomised in Crack Cocaine, which has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with the kind of all-consuming love that leaves hearts broken and lives shattered.

It's fitting that the album closes with I'll Be Fine, the title of the song is the only time Thomas strays from the truth, as the notes fade and the door closes, you realize that fine is the last thing Molly Thomas will be. Shoot The Sky is so confessional and close to home that, for her own well-being, I hope that she's finally exorcised whatever demons drove her to record it.

Quite what the country capital of the world makes of this rebel poet in its midst, is anybody's guess. One thing is sure, Nashville will have to sit up and take note because you just can't ignore the power of Molly Thomas or Shoot The Sky. - NetRhythms UK review

http://www.al.com/entertainment/mobileregister/lspecker.ssf?/base/entertainment/110509300465620.xml


New CD is antidote to Ashlee Simpson


Friday, January 07, 2005I catch the very end of Ashlee Simpson's appearance at the Orange Bowl halftime show and wake up the next day wondering: Was the whole thing as bad as that snippet seemed to me?
Has it really come to this? An ultra-micro-managed property putting on the facsimile of a punk show, right down to the classic "A" for anarchy on the drum kit, in this utterly corporate production? And she's not singing so much as hollering? And hollering badly?
It had to be real. The audience in the stadium didn't even boo when it was over. It just sort of groaned.

And I think: This is not a very promising start to The Year in Entertainment, 2005. Maybe the lip-synching wasn't such a bad thing, compared to the alternative.
So I sit at my desk and I take the wrapper off "Shoot the Sky," Molly Thomas' new CD, and within a few minutes, everything is magically getting better. Because without knowing what I needed, I've found it: A work of wonderful artistic honesty.
If you don't remember Molly, you should. A Mississippi native, she spent some memorable years in Mobile, starting in the mid-'90s as a member of Cold Water Flat, later Slow Moses.
Afterward she continued to perform blues, rock and folk under her own name, solo and as a bandleader. Aside from songwriting and singing, she's known for her skill with the violin, guitar and piano.
She moved to Nashville in 2001, and later released an EP that showed her moving in a soulful direction somewhat comparable to Shelby Lynne; and early in 2004 she backed Matthew Ryan on tour.
Now she gives us "Shoot the Sky." I'll describe the style as straightforward contemporary singer-songwriter, as if that actually is a style. Thomas mixes in alt-country and blue-eyed soul cues, with occasional forays into rock and a good measure of her violin playing.
The album has a slightly gauzy sound, but it's not the production haze often used to cover up the limitations of weak vocalists. It's more the throwback resonance of projects like last year's Jack White-Loretta Lynn album.
There's a lot of pop out there that puts on a pretense of being upbeat but turns out to be self-pitying when you scrutinize it. (Note to self: "Quit scrutinizing pop" might be a really beneficial new year's resolution.)
What Thomas is doing here is exactly the opposite. The music is deep, gentle, flowing, often on the brink of melancholy -- but the sentiment, both in the lyrics and in their delivery, is life-affirming. As in "The Easy Side:"
"get back to the easy side/i wanna be where i don't have to hide/i wanna be where I ain't got no pride/on the easy side -- billy graham on the microphone/tellin' stories that you're not alone/to hungry people/wantin' more and more/sunday news/to get to heaven's door -- the easy side"
Thomas tells me that she plans a local CD release party in February or March; details to come. In the meantime "Shoot the Sky" is available through www.mollythomas.com for $12 plus shipping. It probably will be available soon at Satori and Bay Sound, Thomas says, though it isn't there yet.
It's an album that reflects the challenges of life, and the decision most of us continually make, to keep getting up and meeting them.
And that, folks, is the perfect cure for the blues you get when you start to think that maybe skillfully produced frauds are the best we can expect.
Lawrence F. Specker is the Mobile Register's entertainment reporter. He can be reached by phone at (251) 219-5606; by e-mail as lspecker@mobileregister.com; by fax at (251) 219-5799. Mail notices of upcoming events to him at the Register, P.O. Box 2488, Mobile, AL 36652. - The Mobile Register

As so often happens with good musicians in Music City, violinist Molly Thomas is transitioning from accompanist to a center stage. Thomas and her violin have been heard onstage or in the studio with Mindy Smith, Matthew Ryan, Will Kimbrough and other heavyweights, and her new Shoot the Sky album is drawing not-faint-at-all praise from some of those collaborators.

Ryan calls her "untouched and singular in her expression," while Kimbrough likens Shoot the Sky to something "like Nico and Lucinda in a slow, quiet catfight" or "like blues meets New York jaded resignation, yet still soulful. I like this record. It moves me."

As usual, those guys are on the mark. Thomas' album sounds like nothing else going on in town. It's distinctly Southern yet not at all "country," and she uses the blues as an intimation and a feeling, not as a pattern of well-worn chords. Hear for yourself tonight at an album release party at The Basement. - The Tennessean by Peter Cooper

As so often happens with good musicians in Music City, violinist Molly Thomas is transitioning from accompanist to a center stage. Thomas and her violin have been heard onstage or in the studio with Mindy Smith, Matthew Ryan, Will Kimbrough and other heavyweights, and her new Shoot the Sky album is drawing not-faint-at-all praise from some of those collaborators.

Ryan calls her "untouched and singular in her expression," while Kimbrough likens Shoot the Sky to something "like Nico and Lucinda in a slow, quiet catfight" or "like blues meets New York jaded resignation, yet still soulful. I like this record. It moves me."

As usual, those guys are on the mark. Thomas' album sounds like nothing else going on in town. It's distinctly Southern yet not at all "country," and she uses the blues as an intimation and a feeling, not as a pattern of well-worn chords. Hear for yourself tonight at an album release party at The Basement. - The Tennessean by Peter Cooper

translation:
The amount of female singer-songwriters right now is so big that we are A) getting a bit tired of it, B) sure it’s impossible to listen to everything. All this was forgiven however when we came across an album that cheered us up and gave us the idea that we were really onto something.
Shoot the Sky from Molly Thomas just such a record. Shoot the Sky is the debut from this Nashville based singer, but she’s no stranger to the music business. She can be heard with folks from Mindy Smith, Matthew Ryan to Todd Snider and is a frequently asked guest fiddle player and background singer. For this reason Shoot the Sky is a musically mature record and because Molly Thomas also possessed the obvious life experience, her debut makes a weathered and lived impression. Shoot the Sky is an emotional record, full of heartache that’s spread out over a wide musical pallet. Rock, folk, country, roots. Molly Thomas can handle it all and sounds as though she’s never done anything else but that. The musical frame around this album is atmospheric, sometimes dark and threatening, and suits the emotionally full voice of Molly Thomas. Shoot the Sky has touches of Lucinda Williams but also of Tara Angell’s wonderful record. This CD absolutely deserves to be heard- by the lovers of the aforementioned singers but actually by anyone who has a warm place in their hearts for exceptional singer songwriters. - Aanbevolen Cd's - The Netherlands by Jacob Visser

translation:
The amount of female singer-songwriters right now is so big that we are A) getting a bit tired of it, B) sure it’s impossible to listen to everything. All this was forgiven however when we came across an album that cheered us up and gave us the idea that we were really onto something.
Shoot the Sky from Molly Thomas just such a record. Shoot the Sky is the debut from this Nashville based singer, but she’s no stranger to the music business. She can be heard with folks from Mindy Smith, Matthew Ryan to Todd Snider and is a frequently asked guest fiddle player and background singer. For this reason Shoot the Sky is a musically mature record and because Molly Thomas also possessed the obvious life experience, her debut makes a weathered and lived impression. Shoot the Sky is an emotional record, full of heartache that’s spread out over a wide musical pallet. Rock, folk, country, roots. Molly Thomas can handle it all and sounds as though she’s never done anything else but that. The musical frame around this album is atmospheric, sometimes dark and threatening, and suits the emotionally full voice of Molly Thomas. Shoot the Sky has touches of Lucinda Williams but also of Tara Angell’s wonderful record. This CD absolutely deserves to be heard- by the lovers of the aforementioned singers but actually by anyone who has a warm place in their hearts for exceptional singer songwriters. - Aanbevolen Cd's - The Netherlands by Jacob Visser

"I'm a fool and your tattoo is on me for good," sings Molly Thomas in opening track "Blueprint." That lyric sets the mood for an album that could be a soundtrack for recovering from a breakup. "Another wasted dream, another wasted man, another wasted day with you," Thomas sings over somber strings and piano.

The reverb and simple acoustic guitar arrangements of the album recall early Mazzy Star. Slow, dreamy tunes sustain beautiful string lines and Thomas' soulful vocals as she sings about loneliness, forgiveness and a love as addictivea as crack cocaine. "I Hear a Symphony" is the lyrical highpoint of the album: "In the subway of a slow dark pain...in the eyes of an old Polish woman on that train...in the sheets of a big and haunted bed, I hear a symphony." Strings soar and piano joins in on the mantra of the chorus "You are not alone."

Got someone to get oer? Pick up a copy of Shoot the Sky and commiserate with Thomas. - Performing Songwriter by Mare Wakefield

We zijn de afgelopen jaren overspoeld met vrouwelijke singer-songwriters die lekker in het gehoor liggende folkpop maken, dus we staan zo langzamerhand wat argwanend tegenover nieuwkomers. Iemand die verschillende jaren in de muziekbusiness zit en nu pas op de proppen komt met een debuutalbum, is de uit Nashville komende Molly Thomas. De laatste jaren was ze reeds te horen op cd's van o.a. Mindy Smith, Matthew Ryan, Will Kimbrough en Todd Snider en bovendien een veel gevraagd violist en achtergrondzangeres.Thomas weet ons met haar debuut "Shoot The Sky" echter onmiddellijk te betoveren. Deze singer-songwriter maakt van die mooie folksongs die onmiddelijk blijven hangen, maar gelukkig ook wel iets eigenwijs hebben. Op "Shoot The Sky" wordt de jonge Amerikaanse bijgestaan door Rowland Stebbins, die met zijn warme stem de backing vocals verzorgt in de 'late-night' waltz "My Side", Brian Harrison (Lucinda Williams), zorgt voor de co-writing en co-productie van drie tracks waarvan de afsluiter "I'll Be Fine" wel het meest te vergelijken is met het werk van Lucinda Williams. Een ander hoogtepunt is het radiovriendelijke "Wide of The Mark", waarin Harrison te horen is op gitaar. Andere gast Matthew Ryan met wie Thomas in het verleden regelmatig tourde is ook als gitarist aanwezig op de titeltrack en als backing vocalist in de piano ballade "Sleep", maar ook zijn "I Hear A Symphony" bezorgt deze plaat zijn enige cover. De uit Houston komende Mando Saenz is te horen op de trage ballade "Bad Timing", een liefdesong die hij tesamen schreef met Thomas. Deze heren zorgen hier en daar voor een rock, folk of country accent, maar het is Molly Thomas die op "Shoot The Sky" de meeste indruk maakt, want ze tovert het ene na het andere prachtliedje uit de hoge hoed. De ene keer sober en bijna verstild, de volgende keer behoorlijk uitbundig. Haar stemgeluid lijkt af en toe als twee druppels water op dat van de door ons bewonderde Shelby Lynne, maar in muzikaal opzicht staat "Shoot The Sky" dichter bij de muziek van Tara Angell en Lucinda Williams. Met "Shoot The Sky" manifesteert Molly Thomas zich als een enorme aanwinst voor het genre. - RootsTime Review by Freddy Celis in Belgium

"I'm a fool and your tattoo is on me for good," sings Molly Thomas in opening track "Blueprint." That lyric sets the mood for an album that could be a soundtrack for recovering from a breakup. "Another wasted dream, another wasted man, another wasted day with you," Thomas sings over somber strings and piano.

The reverb and simple acoustic guitar arrangements of the album recall early Mazzy Star. Slow, dreamy tunes sustain beautiful string lines and Thomas' soulful vocals as she sings about loneliness, forgiveness and a love as addictivea as crack cocaine. "I Hear a Symphony" is the lyrical highpoint of the album: "In the subway of a slow dark pain...in the eyes of an old Polish woman on that train...in the sheets of a big and haunted bed, I hear a symphony." Strings soar and piano joins in on the mantra of the chorus "You are not alone."

Got someone to get oer? Pick up a copy of Shoot the Sky and commiserate with Thomas. - Performing Songwriter by Mare Wakefield