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"It's this crazy, eclectic thing, sort of like patchwork," muses the Australian chanteuse Tania Bowers about her band Via Tania's highly anticipated new album, Moon Sweet Moon. Recorded over five years, the lush, layered arrangements foreground her voice - which is both soft and brazen, like she's whispering directly into your ear - and have a dreamy, irresistible appeal. Now settled in Chicago, the pale, dark-haired beauty draws from a wide galaxy of influences, including the garage-pop band she formed with her sister at age sixteen that saw her opening for acts like the Breeders - and, of course, the moon. "I like the idea that songs can be from the ether," she admits, "like there's something happening as far away as the moon, and it's just coming through me." - Megan Conway
- Vogue
Tania Bowers deserves to leap off off tastemakers' tongues much in the same way their other assorted darlings do seemingly every day. While I may not carry their clout or reputation (thankfully), I'll be happy to trumpet Bowers to whoever will listen (and I'm willing to use full force).
Her second effort under the Via Tania moniker, "Moon Sweet Moon" is instantly stunning. It crushed you in much the way listeners recently were steamrolled by St Vincent and Bat For Lashes (two artists to which Bowers will easily draw comparison) or by Bjork and Kate Bush decades earlier). This 12 track offering by the former SDFGH member enraptures the imagination
This 12-track offering by the former SPDFGH member enraptures the imagination with Bowers’ sweetly melodic, borderline witchy vocals and trancey, dreamworld pop arrangements that demand relistening.
There are so many highlights on “Moon” that it’s tough to pinpoint them for fear anything will be left out.
Nonetheless, make sure you take time to visit eerie and soulful opener “The Beginning”; gorgeous, acoustically picked ballad “Dangerously”; tender, folk filtered “Howcome”; the watery, organic “Our Wild Flight”; and the dynamic pop of “Become Forest,” which easily could burn a spot onto your iPod mix, while Bowers permanently stitches her name across your heart.
Bowers is one of those rare artists that could give the hemorrhaging music industry a glimmer of hope.
( Brian Krasman ) - The Daily News
Still-life artwork has had a varying reputation over the centuries, but from ancient times to Cézanne, the format has allowed artists a degree of freedom with light, color, and composition that can be hard to match in more naturalistic settings. Of course, the video for "Wonder Stranger", from latest Via Tania LP Moon Sweet Moon, isn't a still life, but director Michelle Ruiz focuses on a bountiful arrangement of fruits and vegetables that could've come to life out of one. Via Tania, aka Australian-born Chicago chanteuse Tania Bowers, sings in a wispy, elfin voice amid an ornate, music box-like arrangement that makes me surprised to see that her previous album was often described as "trip-hop". Vocal effects do add a certain spaceyness, but "Wonder Stranger" comes closer to Joanna Newsom than to Portishead. Bowers could be in a painting herself, her cheeks as hyper-colorful as the food and flowers around her as she works some kind of magic in the kitchen. Posted by Marc Hogan on Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 5:30pm - Pitchfork
I’ve been super into Via Tania lately: the Chicago-by-way-of-Australia singer-songwriter just released her second album, Moon Sweet Moon, and it’s full of dreamy-yet-substantial, bliss-and-wonder-filled tracks — “The Beginning” is an absolute gem — with some guilt-free disco thrown in to marvelous effect. Fans of Kate Nash, Feist, and even Kerli, start downloading.
( Tamar Initai ) - MTV
Discography
Moon Sweet Moon (to be released 2009)
Become Forest EP (released Australia 2008)
Our Wild Flight EP (released Australia 2008)
True EP (Chocolate Industries, 2006)
Boltanski EP (Chocolate Industries, 2005)
Under a Different Sky (Chocolate Industries, 2003)
Lightning & Thunder (Chocolate Industries, 2002)
Dream of... EP (Chocolate Industries, 2002)
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Bio
Tania Bowers' life as a musical gypsy has lead to her on a path full of happenstance and wonder.
Born in Australia to South African parents, she began playing with her sister Kim in vowel-free, noise-pop outfit SPDFGH around Sydney in the early Nineties, opening for the likes of The Breeders and Bikini Kill even before she was legally allowed to drink.
Post SPDFGH she worked on a spare, thoughtful self–released EP under the name Sunday. Relocating to Chicago at the end of the Nineties she set about piecing together an album as Via Tania, with producer Casey Rice and various Chicago musical luminaries, with a focus on production, electronics and sound, and the songs acting as vessel for said sounds. The album Under A Different Sky was released in 2004 to acclaim, on the underground hip hop label, Chocolate Industries.
Her sophomore release, Moon Sweet Moon sees a change in direction for Via Tania, dictated from the very seeds of the songs upwards. "I was remembering my first ideas, and ideals, of songwriting from my teens," explains Tania. "I wasn't thinking about production or any aesthetic for the recordings, I was writing more like I used to when I was a kid, listening to Suzanne Vega."
The recording of the album began in earnest in Australia but took many surprising turns with musicians and sessions in the US, Europe and Australia. "I had a lot of moving around and trying to find out a place where I really want to be. When you write songs it becomes really apparent that whether they are fiction, non-fiction or somewhere in-between, these songs represent your years. This record went through so many changes, stages, and re-inventions because the last five or so years I moved countries twice, and worked with different people."
Ironically it was back in Australia at a chance meeting at a show that Tania met Texan producer Craig Ross, a key figure in the thriving Austin music scene who has worked with many artists including Emmylou Harris, Daniel Johnston, Patty Griffin and Spoon.
Hitting it off Tania assembled the various sessions and went to Austin to work with Craig. "I had no idea how much more we were going to re-record. He is different in that, he brought out the songs in a new way for me. We got really into harmonies and vocal tracks. He would say that the whole point is to make the music as 'Tania' as possible. At first I didn't really get it, I thought it was Tania because I wrote it. He really wanted to shift the focus and didn't want me to hide behind anything particularly stylistic."
And so we have Moon Sweet Moon, a musical statement of intent, an album filled with, as Tania describes it, 'moon pop'.
From the into of ‘The Beginning' to the last lines of 'Songs of Love', Tania's hushed vocals and distinctive songwriting are the centrepiece of the album, with Craig and Tania painting musical palettes around them. With the Tim Burton-esque creaks and moans of 'In Light Years', the campfire balladry of 'How Come' and 'Everyworld' to the 70s Scando-disco of 'Our Wild Flight', the album ebbs and flows in beguiling harmony. Moon Sweet Moon features contributions from an array of skilled players including members of Tortoise, Lara May (Ben Lee’s band), Shearwater and Melbourne’s Ground Components, to name but a few.
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