Quinta-feira 19 Out 2006, 22h:01

Recently I went to the Mennofolk festival in Harrisonburg… mainly to see Over the Rhine, but I thought I'd check out the rest of the festival too. And boy am I glad I did! During which, I had the pleasure of seeing Rachel Ries.. a 20-something (I think.. I haven't been able to find her age, but she looked like she was in her early to mid 20s) Folk singer/songwriter from South Dakota by way of Chicago.

Her latest Waterbug release, For You Only was recorded on vintage analog equipment, which just adds to the already very vintage sound, and is pretty much entirely acoustic.. mainly acoustic guitar (she plays guitar and sings, and does banjo on one song) but also with the occasional bass and banjo, and even a fiddle appearance or two and a very occasional piano and I think even a pump organ. It's a very classic 20s-30s sound, sort of a jazz tinged folk I guess… reminds me a little of Rosie Thomas and Jolie Holland. I don't think there is a song on the album I don't like.

Anyhow, I've really fallen in love with this album.. she's overnight shot up into my favorite female folk singers list.. she just has an amazing voice, and the songwriting and music skills to go along with it. She can even pull off her amazing vocals completely in tact live as well.. which even some of my favorite singers don't do so well.

I had a brief conversation with her and asked her about her influences after the show.. she named a bunch of people I haven't heard of (and a few I had but can't remember) and she also said she listens to a lot of indie rock.. so I thought that was pretty cool. She does have a list of influences on her myspace if you're interested.

Acoustic Guitar reviews,
"From the first cascading melody line of "Lonely Spires," Rachel Ries ensnares the listener in a gorgeous web of silvery vocals, homey fingerpicking and strumming, and literary lyrics wrapped in mercurial, yet soothing tunes. While her vintage sound is reminiscent of music from the 1920s and ’30s, her approach to writing is altogether contemporary, imbuing folksy imagery with a compelling sense of mystery. In the lead track, "Lonely Spires," for example, sandcastles are like castles in the air as love becomes the stuff of memory: " . . . Meet you at the shores / We used to fill with silver stones and bones and tones of no remorse / And build our castles with their lonely spires high." Her voice, though it may beg comparisons to early jazz and folksingers, playfully snakes around her melodies in a way few were doing back in the day. The result is a delightful mix of the offbeat and the familiar. Ries is a self-taught guitar player whose clean fingerpicking is bluesy but not slavishly so, in service only to the temper and flow of her songs. While other instruments like banjo, piano, or percussion do show up on For You Only, they take a farther-back-than-usual backseat to Ries, offering only subtle color, not bold statements. The album was recorded on vintage analog equipment, presumably to further capture a bygone sound. Some artists might need the boost in creating atmosphere, but Ries is well up to the task of invoking mood, memory, and nostalgia all on her own. -Judith Edelman"

Highly recommended.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/rachelries
Website: http://www.rachelries.com/home.html
Buy: http://waterbug.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=102