Search - Marian Call :: Vanilla

Harmony and Dissonance and Love defying Loneliness

Richard Stoehr | Bremerton, WA USA | 06/01/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"By one of those coincidences that can only happen on the Internet, I found Marian Call just as she was preparing her first CD. I saw a picture that led me to a website where I heard her music for the first time. And I fell for it immediately.



I learned that she had written not one, not two, but three songs about characters in the show 'Firefly,' one of my favorites. I learned that she loved books and typewriters (she even includes a typewriter as accompaniment in the song 'Vanilla') and that she was literally assembling her first run of CDs herself, with CDs and cases and labels scattered around her house, all of which was completely charming, and bespoke a character and a personality worth sitting up and taking notice of. And it is that personality which comes out in the music, strong and clear as a bell.



I've listened to all of the songs on 'Vanilla' now dozens of times, and I keep coming back to it again and again. It is good music for a rainy day, but it goes well with sunshine too...like the thick, warm sun of 'Sunday Afternoon,' one of the best songs on the album, sung in a slow, sensual and sleepy style that evokes just the right feeling of those lazy hours of the last day of the week. There are songs for happy times, like the wonderfully simple 'I'm Yours,' a perfect expression of faith and trust in another person. And there are songs for hard times, too, like the strikingly honest 'Your Fault,' the sort of confrontation that is so real but almost never really happens even when you wish it would. There are lighthearted numbers, like 'The Volvo Song' and 'Vanilla,' as well as serious songs like 'Dark Dark Eyes'...and they all blend together to form a tapestry of sound and voice that can simply take you away for a while.



Comparing Marian to other singers seems pointless, as she has a style all her own, both lyrically and in the quality of her voice and how she uses it. There is something about the words she's chosen and the way he sings them: you can tell she means it. These are honest songs. Each one is like a story, or a little snippet of something overheard. Listening to Marian Call is like a conversation with your best friend at two in the morning, with your favorite music playing in the background -- it is personal, even intimate in how it approaches you and speaks to you and engages you.



When you get this and listen to it for the first time, don't just play it in the background. Get a glass of wine or a bottle of beer, sit down, close your eyes, and just listen. Pay attention. Let it wash over you. Someone like Marian doesn't come along every day, and when she does, you should really slow down and just listen. This is music as it was meant to be."

A Wordsmith with a beautiful, listenable voice

Paul A. Pew | Austin, TX | 12/06/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

""I know you see right through me, but please don't look away..."



Marian's lyrics kill sometimes, amuse sometimes -- always clever, always exactly the right words, just like good poetry should always be. If you're a music person, you'll dig her double inflections and little tiny hints at bitonality. Her music manages to be harmonically interesting and melodically angular and cool without becoming jazz.

Her songwriting, it seems, is informed by a knowledge of complicated music, yet her songs remain uncomplicated and cool. Clearly she has studied theory and harmony and does not fall into the three-chords-and-a-predictable-melody school of music. And her lyrics will break your heart, if your heart is made of penetrable stuff, and make you laugh if you have a molecule of mirth in your spirit. I listen to this album all the time. You should too.



"I'm Yours" is simply one of the best love songs ever. Yum.

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