Spirit and Dust

"Spirit and Dust are intrepid tourers of the 50 states, a hardy band of minstrels that conquer boredom in audiences with a musical outreach that could very easily be just the thing that the Obama team needs to get America in shape: it's a musical stimulus plan!

This all may sound like hyperbole. However, when you consider that the leader of the band, Kristen Sylvester, is only 19, and has the "old sorrow" in her voice of the most traveled box-car crooner, you get an injection of hope that her band's kind of earnestness in songwriting is what will carry Philadelphia into its own, alongside Nashville, Seattle, etc.

Kristen did not merely write a biography for her band, but sumbitted something wholly literary, showing that a lyricist should think intensely about what comes across the mic and hits the auditory nerve: 'Spirit and Dust is our hope that the sounds feel warm in your ears while on the stay or on the go. It is Kristen's moniker and mask for storytelling; a personal mystical fist in the nose of capitalism, fascism, injustice and fear. It is one of the tools we have discovered for connecting with the world. All of the songs express what is in the soul: a longing, a most intimate atonement with the world and a violent wrenching loose, a burning hearkening to one's own dark soul, an intoxicating surrender and a deep curiosity about the miraculous.'

Availed by bandmates, Jesse Kennedy-- 'the cynicism and the flannel,' and John Romberger-- 'the mind control and the reason we are late to every performance,' the trio sports an honest and intense vocal harmony bent around a classic folk chasis, and is now touring through Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Alabama, Kentucky...the list of towns to be hit appears to be endless.

'We Want Our Planet Back Now' is a haunting ode to reluctant Hope: 'all over this planet if we just lend a hand, to the people who need it that much more than the man, who has plenty to offer but can't find the time, to give help where it's bleeding from wounds made of man.'

Become immediately fascinated at www.myspace.com/spiritanddust" - Autism Living and Working

“[Spirit and Dust] is a moniker and mask for storytelling.” At first listen, the storyteller, Kristen Sylvester, sounds like a road-tested warrior lamenting and weaving tales around the campfire about heartache, hope and redemption with shaman-like wisdom while she sips whiskey from her bottle. That is why it was an absolute shock to find out that Sylvester is still a teenager. I am a little weary of that information only because it was second-hand and no one so young should sound like she is carrying so much of the world’s weight on her shoulders. This diamond in the rough has tons of potential and time to evolve. With a voice that can cross somewhere between Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde) and Thao Nguyen, I’m very interested to hear what Kristen Sylvester will create once she’s had more time and experience to refine her recording process. myspace.com/spiritanddust
- Q.D. Tran
- The Deli Magazine