Album review

Mike Andrews
Hand on String (Elgin Park)

Andrews, who created the magical score for Donnie Darko, delivers a poetic first solo album that proves he doesn't need another's narrative to produce inspired work. The story he tells is of the precariousness of relationships, illustrating it with diaphanous vocals, off-kilter arrangements, good old-fashioned musicianship (he plays most of the instruments), and charming eccentricity—two songs reference citrus ("Hello Lemon," "Orange Meet Lemon"). It takes nerve to step out from behind the scenes, but in this case the effort was most fruitful. A–  —Kristina Feliciano  

(Published June 2, 2005)

 

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Keepin' It Rio

Four years ago, Bebel Gilberto made an
old Brazilian genre new. Her latest
proves she's still the bossa. 

Bebel Gilberto’s name may be synonymous with chilling out, but the singer herself has been doing anything but relaxing since she released 2000’s Tanto Tempo, which updated the breezy, bittersweet sound of bossa nova with electronica, and became the album to lounge to. Tempo was nominated for two Latin Grammys—and launched Gilberto into a four-year frenzy of touring and recording that has yet to abate.
    “Before [Tempo], I had more time to be with my boyfriend and my family and my friends,” says Gilberto, 38. “Not it’s like if I have a day off, I have so many other things to do it’s not really a day off.” Not that she’s complaining about being all travel, no leisure; she used the loneliness of the road as inspiration for her latest, Bebel Gilberto. Marius de Vries, a frequent Björk collaborator, produced the disc, which brims with picturesque, cocktail-friendly melodies. The electronica elements that distinguished Temp—and helped spawn more modern bossa nova compilations that you can shake a caipirinha at—are there, but so are some traditional sounds of Brazil, like rich string arrangements. It’s Gilberto at her most assured and distinct, leaving no doubt that this daughter of legendary Brazilian guitarist Joao Gilberto and vocalist Miúcha is very much her own artist.
    Now all she needs is a proper vacation day. Gilberto knows she’s unlikely to get one anytime soon, but she can at least dress the part. As she’s doing this phone interview, she’s stationed herself on the terrace of her NYC apartment so she can tend her plants ad soak up a bit of sun. “I’m in a bikini, if you can believe it,” she laughs.

(Published June 11, 2004) 

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,645647,00.html

 

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Floetry Slam

Playing b-ball with England’s
hip-hop hoop stars

It’s because we have day jobs. That’s what we told ourselves after losing two basketball games in a row to English soul duo Floetry, who agreed to play some preinterview hoops with us—and trounced us, 11–2 and 11–6. Besides being proven songwriters and dynamic performers, these girls are ballers, legitimate hoop stars in their native London. We hold chairs down all day, five days a week.
    Floetry are Marsha Ambrosius and Natalie Stewart, or songstress and floacist, as they refer to themselves on their Oct. 1 debut, Floetic—but we like to call them Dr. and the Enforcer. Stewart, 25, a onetime performance poet, brings the rhymes—and the occasional shoulder to the larynx when she’s being guarded too closely. Ambrosius, 23, runs the court as effortlessly as she knocks out the full-bodied melodies on their CD.
    She and Stewart have been friends—and b-ball rivals—for roughly half their lives, and it shows. They set picks and post up like Jordan and Pigpen circa ’96. Now they live a block apart from each other in Philadelphia, where they recorded Floetic. The 16-song disc, exec-produced by “Jazzy Jeff” Townes, offers storytelling in the self-empowerment, self-revelatory style that has brought Grammy nominations to India.Arie and Jill Scott, and mixes the classic soul of artists like Sly and the Family Stone with contemporary R&B. “The point of my art is to inspire,” says Stewart, stopping to talk as we ponder the possibility of a third defeat. “It’s therapeutic for me. I repented on the album.”
    Floetic may be their debut, but it’s not the duo’s first stab at the music charts. The prolific pair has written songs for Whitney Houston and Bilal, plus the hit single “Butterflies” for Michael Jackson, which Ambrosius penned when she was a teenager.  “If you hear [our] demo and you hear his version, they’re exactly the same,” she says, without a hint of arrogance.  And the hit-records streak continues: “Floetic,” the first single off their album, has already climbed to No. 34 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart and is still rising. Unbeatable? Tell us about it.
    We should have known that they would cream us at hoops. Already ragged and panting after a short warm-up, we joined the duo for a photograph before the game. They spelled out “UW, for uptown women, so we arranged our fingers into EW, for obvious reasons. Only we got it backward. WE didn’t stand a chance. —Kristina Feliciano and Evan Serpick

(Published Oct. 18, 2002) http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,363691~4~0~ewshootshoopswith,00.html?print