White Cats (Tara Angell)

This New York singer-songwriter knows about heavy: the lonesome, quiet kind, where the sinner's wages of Marianne Faithfull's saloon songs meet the spectral defiance of Lucinda Williams' country blues. Produced by Joseph Arthur with the haunted touch of Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind, Come Down was one of 2005's pleasures: compelling, psychedelicized darkness streaked with reassuring light.
DAVID FRICKE

(Posted: Jan, 12 2006)
- Rolling Stone

From Bitch Magazine Spring 2005

With a voice like a tenor banshee in B minor, Tara Angell calls to mind the archetypal goth-girl rocker of the late 20th century.  Her searing vocals sound like Aimee Mann, if Mann got up on the wrong side of the bed and tripped over a funky urban blues groove on her way out the front door.  Drawing on an intensity forged of burnt emotion, Come Down captures the right mix of synthesized sound and Angell's natural fire streaming in an occasional rockin' guitar riff.  She has long been a fixture on New York City's music scene;  this, her first studio album, showcases a set of pipes that can hit the operatic low notes as well as rend the very air out of the high ones. 
 
Angell's musical prowess could stand solo on any stage or CD, but she doesn't stop at semi-synthetic sound alone, instead adding a continuous lyrical punch behind the harmonies.  She turns rejection into a love song ("When You Find Me"), and invokes a touch of angry-chick chic when she sings, "Don't blame me, don't blame the world/Don't cry for me, I'm not your little girl."  The hipster-ironic "Bitch Please"  brings a track of drunken giggles to the background as she belts out the oh-poor-you tease, "I'm sure it's hard to be a man."  The occasional moment of raw sweetness contrasts with the bitter drive of tunes that declare, "There's no silver lining when it comes to you and me."  Throughout, Angell's voice is weighed down with the jagged heaviness of lyrical flame and emotional heat--and lifted up by the inverse gravity of a soulful muse.   --Julie Craig


NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE
May 2005
Imagine a rough-voiced woman singing Mazzy Star covers in the apartment upstairs while a garage band practices in the place next door.  The disparate sounds spilling into your living room are complementary in a strange way, though they weren't meant to fit together.  That's Tara Angell.

Come Down, the New York singer-songwriter's debut, is packed with harrowing songs of dysfunction and vulnerability that exert a dark pull.  Many of the tunes sound as if Angell and producer Joseph Arthur recorded onto someone else's discarded tape and some of the abandoned songs bled through into Angell's.

When it works, it's bewitching, especially on tracks such as "The World Will Match Your Pain" and the opening cut"Untrue".  It's more distracting on "Bitch Please", which
may have been recorded during a dinner party;  there's the sound of people chattering and laughing
and, about three-quarters of the way through, an abrupt explosion.
Really.

It's a bit ironic, actually, because Come Down is anything but explosive.  The album is a slow build, emotions piling up one after the other until they teeter precariously and collapse under their own weight.  And Angell keeps singing, flinging accusations and offering quiet regrets in a voice coarsened by late nights and endless disappointment. 

-Eric R. Danton
- Bitch Magazine/ No Depression

ALLMUSIC.COM:
Review
by Thom Jurek
Tara Angell's debut Come Down is one of those records: one that once heard is instantly memorable. Produced by songwriter Joseph Arthur and recorded in only five days, it is a dark, harrowing, and vulnerable gem by a songwriter who understands the strengths of her many influences well, and filters them all through her own story. Traces of everyone from the Rolling Stones, Lucinda Williams, Marianne Faithfull, Neil Young, Daniel Lanois, PJ Harvey, and indie rock heroes Low slide in and out of the mix, all harnessed by Angell's particular poetic lyrical gift and her ability to write a skeletal melody that grips instantly. "Hollow Hope," pops like an outtake from Exile on Main St.; "Untrue" offers the confessional side of darkness unapologetically yet utterly devoid of venom or pose; "The World Will Match Your Pain," with its ghostly organ and flawed guitar sound, caresses her words from the corner of the heart's own faltering stillness. The ramshackle mix on "Bitch Please," is held taut in the grip of Angell's words. The poignant, narcotic lilt of "You Can't Say No to Hell," is as world-weary as anything Williams has ever put on tape, and the sheer narcotic drone and distortion in "Uneven," offers a taste of darkness so alluring and sweet you don't even want to try it once. This is a recording so naked emotionally and so unapologetic musically it demands attention. Repeated listenings bring out the considerable songcraft gently in the lo-fi aesthetic and raw emotion. A winner.

- All Music.com

Pulse Weekly
FOUR Stars
Tara Angell’s music is an interesting beast: it’s protective of its hidden contents, because those are the most precious, the most heartfelt and the most interesting elements of sonic exploration. Her voice is sad and lonely, but at the same time (somehow) hopeful.

Angell’s music is hauntingly beautiful, dark and mysterious, and it drips with a back-country/barroom vibe that would put any typical bar band to shame. Her voice is reminiscent of Neil Young’s, and her lyrics are honest. (Her inflection is Young to the max.) Her songs are simply executed but crafted in a careful way, and that’s exactly where the bite is – it’s kind of like a sucker punch. Sometimes witty, sometimes sarcastic, and always lamenting, Tara Angell has found a way to forever be good.

- Pulse Weekly

THE TIMES, LONDON, SUNDAY 2/20
4 stars ****
"... Lucinda Williams must enjoy her world-weary vocals and obvious love of late-1960s Stones (from the pop-shuffle of Hollow Hope to the slow, country twang of Untrue); the uber-producer Lanois, meanwhile, must rate the beautifully flawed production -by singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur -that (almost incredibly) was the result of only five days in the studio. That working week created one of the most fully realised debuts you'll hear for a long time."
- London Times

CD Review: Tara Angell, Come Down
"It's as if an Angel, well, came down."
The Harvard Independant
By Kelly Faircloth
Thursday, February 17, 2005
It would be difficult for me to classify Tara Angell's debut album into a precise genre. Sometimes indie, sometimes almost alt-country (see the Lucinda Williams recommendation on the cover), Angell stands out as the rare artist who says exactly what she wants to say in the best way of saying it, without regard for labels and formulas. Citing James Purdy and the stark, uncompromising prose of Flannery O'Conner as influences in her own writing style, Angell is at turns reminiscent of Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and others. She doesn't come across as merely replicating the styles of these greats, either - the echoes of these artists are fleeting as she defines her own style, with a gritty roughness to her voice, calmly even in tone but undeniably firm. Angell doesn't scream, doesn't rage. She recognizes and accepts, presenting us with serious, solemn music in such a way that she helps us to see and deal with shadows and darkness.

The CD opens with "Untrue," which baldly declares in the chorus, "I am untrue." The song seems confessional and soul-bearing, a head-hanging song. Angell pulls no punches in opening with this number, setting a tone of straight truthfulness. The next song, "Hollow Hope," stands out for me as bearing the most striking similarity to Lucinda Williams's work on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. This song picks up the pace of the album, in an almost defiant way, acknowledging the emptiness of her hope in a way that isn't self-pitying or pathetic.

One of the strangest and most interesting songs on the CD, an example of Angell's variability and depth of emotion, is the oddly light-hearted, rather sly "Bitch Please." Smack in the middle of the tracks, the song features a chatty interchange, punctuated with giggles, between a man and a woman in the recording studio, with Angell's vocals overlaid on top. Angell takes an amused look at relations, treating the listener to another side of her personality, different from the seriousness shown on most of the album. Another highlight is "Uneven," taking a hard look at love, the need involved and the highs and lows of being with or without someone you love. Perhaps not the thing to listen to with your significant other on your Valentine's Day outing, the song is steadily thoughtful and thought-provoking, with great music supporting and fleshing out the lyrics.

Perhaps my favorite track on the album is the uncompromising "When You Find Me." The opening to the song vaguely resembles Dylan's "If You See Her, Say Hello," as Angell's vocal styling combines with an effect that makes her sound like she is in an empty room, lending the song an especially solemn sound. The track has an honest, laid-bare quality to it, without any dissembling or "let's just be friends." Angell straight-up declares "I am never gonna love you" in a way that isn't cruel, just truthful. This theme of revelation of painful but necessarily recognized truths runs throughout the album.

- Harvard Independent

From 'Comes With A Smile' Magazine UK Edition #16
...You can see her, nonchalantly leaning against a wall, cigarette dangling from her fingers and with a sneer that would scare Lucinda Williams away. There's more Lucinda styling on When You Find Me, a couldn't-give-a-damn drawl for a lazy afternoon alone. Tales of lost love are dealt with in a mix of sadness and defiance, not so much Liz Phair angry brigade, more Tanya Donelly's 'your loss' sentiment. In Untrue Angell starts so relaxed you fear she's just sleeptalking. And you just know that a song called The World Will Match Your Pain isn't going to be easy and the funereal opening sets the tone as the track walks woundend through dark streets. Amazingly, she makes the song sound more bleak than the title.The jaunty Bitch Please skips along, snatches of conversation litter the background before You Can't Say No To Hell sounds exactly as you'd expect it to. Just when you think you've got the hang of the record, Silver Lining makes you realize otherwise. It's no happy song, it could even be darker on here, although the competition is fierce...."

- Comes With A Smile