Tiny Vipers - Hands Across The Void [2007] [FLAC]

Artist: Tiny Vipers
Release: Hands Across The Void
Released: 2007
Label: Sub Pop
Catalog#: SPCD 739
Format: FLAC / Lossless / Log (100%) / Cue
Country: USA
Style: folk, rock,




1. Campfire Resemblance
2. On This Side
3. Aron
4. Forest On Fire
5. Shipwreck
6. Swastika
7. The Downward

Hands Across the Void is, in the non-imbibing sense of the term, as sobering as folk music gets: patient, resonant, and perhaps most importantly, curious.

Early copy has also frequently mentioned two predecessors for Fortino's approach: early Cat Power and Joanna Newsom. Chan Marshall is the obvious mark in terms of Void's spaciousness and solitude, and both women do well to push listeners out of their comfort zones, but Fortino's sense of yearning is less romantic and more spiritual. Newsom's Ys comes to mind through "Shipwreck"'s madrigal melody, but the resemblance is superficial, evidenced most clearly in the song's refrain: "We want to struggle and survive/ We want to live 'cause we know that life is beautiful/ Though surreal at times." The distinction lies not in the simplicity of the lyrics, but their qualification -- instead of celebration -- of the world's occasional inexplicability.

...

Jesy Fortino's music is and will continue to be classified using adjectives like "spare" and "haunting," but those terms fail in terms of its emotional content. The 24-year old is publicly coming to terms with her interpretive skills as well as her own demons, and is doing it through an intensely vulnerable medium to boot. In that regard, Hands Across the Void, in its myriad attempts at radiance, is actually quite inspirational. -p4k