Amaya Laucirica
Early Summer
10 Track, LP (2010, Departed Sounds)
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Related: Amaya Laucirica.
On her second album, Amaya Laucirica retains the same trio of multi-instrumentalists – Andrew Cowie, Andrew Keese, and Richard Martin – from her 2008 debut, Sugar Lights. They’re joined this time by J.P. Shilo, who handles strings and other embellishment. Due partly to Shilo’s contributions and partly to Laucirica’s own evolution, Early Summer is a dreamier, more ruminative affair. She now sounds less like a singer-songwriter with a band behind her and more like a band leader, twanging her smoky sigh with sureness against the richest of textures. If her lyrics can get lost in all that enveloping prettiness, these songs grow more tangible and accessible as we learn their individual shapes.
Still, it’s an album marked by understatement and restraint, no matter how many different instruments materialise. Like Sally Seltmann’s latest album Heart That’s Pounding, Early Summer is burgeoning with layers, but in this case the results sound more like Mazzy Star fronting a mellowed Jesus and Mary Chain, especially on ‘Climb Up High’. As little as she dramatises her vocal delivery, Laucirica remains very confident in it, slinking through the reverb lullaby ‘This World Can Make You Happy’ and gently reassuring us on ‘When I Think Of All The Places’. Her melancholy on ‘Sleeping In Your Shadow’ comes in degrees as subtle as the growing distance between lovers she describes, while she yearns openly on the almost cosmic country of ‘Marry Me’ and self-harmonises on the closing ‘It’s So Wrong’.
A deeply calm, somewhat shrouded, grower of an album, this puts the Melbourne songwriter towards the front of her class – if only people give it time to settle in.
by Doug Wallen
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The opening single 'This World Can Make You Happy' is available as a free download here
likes.
I look forward to checking this out. If she's half as talented as she is attractive, I have a new favourite artist.
yeah I mean attractive. yeah hmmm yeah attractive, concur.
good post, mrmusic.
top song that. just saying.
Wow - you're a dick.
Thanks for your feedback, Ash. I'll try to take it on board. Can you please elaborate on how someone saying a person is attractive makes them a dick?
Ok, so this is an album review on what is a musically focused website, correct?
I just find it a bit strange that someone would lead with a comment based on the way a person looks as opposed to how they sound....
Sorry for calling you a dick. Maybe you're not a dick.
anyway, great album!
song seems ok. mrmusic is not a dick. she is attractive.
I am unfamiliar with her work. I find her very attractive. So much so that, if her musical ability is half as enticing as her physicality, then she is quite the musician/songwriter.
The sad indictment on my personality is that I wouldn't be as curious if she looked like Beth Ditto. The reality is, if she looked and sang like Beth Ditto and I got exposed to her music, I'd still be impressed.
Don't apologise, I am occasionally a dick and frequently shallow.
Ok, I just listened to This World Can Make You Happy. I hadn't even read the review, but did while I listened to the song. Bang on the money, Mr Wallen. There's nothing immediately remarkable, but I can tell it would be a creeper of an album. Dare I use the cliche phrase 'Hauntingly familiar?'' I found myself trying to compare her voice with other female singers I like. Can hear the reviewers call of Mazzy Star with a mellow Jesus & the Mary Chain. Also a little reminiscent of Novelle Vague. I'm not suggesting that it sounds like it's ripping anything off, just that it gels with things I would listen to.
Sigh. I guess she's just one of those rare beasts of a person that is annoyingly attractive and talented. She's probably a really sweet and humble person too.
Sorry for objectifying her. I am but a man.
great album!
she has good singing technique, like the song
She sounds like a cross between Hope Sandoval, Caroline Kennedy (Plums, Deadstar) and the singer from Drugstore (remember them?).
Nice guitar from Andrew Cowie. And love the violin.
I love the misprint of the first song title: ''Most Times I Fall Apart'', which is almost the opposite of the actual title ''Most Times I Feel Alright''. Also, track 4 is ''... Places'', not planes!
Most times when i think of all the planes i fall apart.
like the guitar tremolo
Neither makes any sense.
Mrmusic, you're half as talented as you are attractive. x
Guitar : Andrew Keese
Violin : JP Shilo
here : (and my html skills suck...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EScq8hc3nlM
she is attractive. the song is slick, nice production, I like her voice. Perhaps this is a 'straight shooter' off the album as it might be I'm interested enough to perhaps search for more perhaps of the left field for sure.
Reverb soaked tambourine is way over done these days. So is poorly intonated violin.
Nice song.
Poor J.P.
Maybe one day he'll learn how to play that fiddle proper-like.
Thanks, Bumcheeks. I'd say your beauty to talented ratio is more like 60/40.
'Early Summer' will be Feature Album of The Week from this coming Thursday on Triple J.
Well deserved.
nice!
Unreal!!!
Amaya will be launching 'Early Summer' on vinyl at The Toff in Town (Mel) on Sat the 18th of December with Howl At The Moon and Matt Bailey in support.
Tix are mega cheap. More details available here.
Entire LP stream here.
Is now available to pre-order on vinyl here. Stock will be arriving next week. Pumped!