The second half of this demo is noticeably superior to the first. The vocals are sweeter and far better controlled, the arrangements are neater, the songs are approachable and lucid, and the melodies are flowing without being too intrusive. It’s very good solid acoustic singer-songwriter fare, and it’s butt-numbingly tedious.
“You’ve Failed” isn’t too bad, being a lightly pretty little confessional that’s a smidgen like Laima Bites’ early recordings, without the sparkle. “Sore Kara” is a run-of-the mill lament enlivened fractionally by some decent double-tracked vocals, and “This Is My Image” is an anonymous ditty with some off-the-peg blues twiddles, and a frustrating deliberate breathy high end crack in the vocals that is so prevalent nowadays as some sort of signifier of intensity (damn you, Morissette!). Tamara Parsons-Baker’s voice is sweet and crisp and attention grabbing without being imposing, but it’s singing nothing of any import in the least memorable way. This is the sort of music to make thoughtless old men in empty open mic bars mumble “She’s not bad” into their slowly supped pints, and the sort of music to depress us woefully at the lack of ambition: before we know it we’re cleaning our keyboard with a retractable pencil instead of focussing on the music.
However, flip back to the start of the CD, and the opening trio of tracks is far more enticing, even though they’re less polished, more awkward, and perhaps not completely ready to be heard. The tone is bleak, empty and melancholy, and Parsons-Baker’s voice has so much more character, if it perhaps exhibits less control. “To Possess” is sparse, dessicated and surprisingly hypnotic – there’s not much to it, but it seems to fit together with a cold logic, like a Japanese garden in the dead of winter. The epic “It’s What We Do”, at nearly eight minutes long, is even more fascinating in its starkness and simplicity, just a spare bass and some guitars which either chime gothically or strum with the heartless efficiency of the executioner’s axe. The vocal is deadeyed and hollow even as it’s lush and folky, Parsons-Baker managing somehow to sound like a mixture of Nico and Eddi Reader. The lyrics are pretty generic (and is that really a line about “scrambled eggs”?), but that doesn’t detract overly from the effect.
“Airs Collide” has a second male voice, and some drums, but just doesn’t quite seem to hang together. We like the continual two-note ostinato that underpins the verses, but the chorus seems tacked on. There’s nothing wrong here, but the song lacks the power of the last two, it feels over-egged (scrambled or otherwise). Somewhere in these opening tracks is a show-stopping voice of defeated souls, and a music of existential doom, although it’s not quite ready yet. Our advice would be drop the pretty stuff, we’ve heard it a million times; get some properly striking lyrics written; develop the dark, bruising, autumnal delivery; throw the blues fills onto the fire; douse the fire and sit in a freezing garret feeling lonely; listen to some recent P J Harvey and turn of the millennium Nick Cave; weep a lot. That way, perhaps Parsons-Baker could create the sort of music to make sensitive young men in empty attic rooms nod quietly and avoid eye contact over their untouched lime sodas.
Well, we never said there was any fame and glory in this game, did we?