Illusions of the Sun, Marianne Nowottny
Marianne Nowottnys (camera Obscura) /> Permit me to cream. Ill be brief. Its Marianne Nowottnys moment. And were lucky enough to have a record of it. Her new disc is just her voice accompanied by a simple instrument. Gone are the more elaborate productions and overworked arrangements of her earlier recordings that obscured her magnificent voice. Stripped down to the essentials, Illusions of the Sun is a chillingly powerful document of a singer-songwriter in full bloom.
Clocking in at a mere 28 minutes, theres not a dead moment on the disc. The breadth she accomplishes with such simple means is astonishing. Her voice jumps in and out of keys, sawing cross-grain through chords, splintering notes into shards, before stitching them back together into pop choruses. Comfortably dipping in and out of atonality, her songs never lose a sense of progression, each retaining a beginning, middle and end. Imagine the songwriting chops of a Stephen Sondheim mixed with the swagger of Arnold Schoenberg and youll begin to get the idea.
"Rainy Days and Vinyl," the strongest cut on Illusions, showcases Nowottnys piano, hesitating and stumbling around her voice, which is by turns breathy, warbly, vulnerable and strong. Nowottny is not afraid of modernism. Dodecaphonic nuggets are seamlessly welded with pop tunes in ways that are shockingly unfamiliar (the only other pop artist Ive heard incorporate high modernism into his work was Frank Zappa: particularly the shards of 12-tones on Absolutely Free as well as the numerous nods to Varese). "Grey City," Nowottnys oblique 9/11 song, also owes a lot to Schoenberg, in this case his sprechstimme-laden Pierrot Lunaire, which is, in hindsight, a perfect soundtrack for that days events.
Nowottny grew up watching Bollywood films on the local public-access channels in suburban New Jersey. "Sweet and Low" is her attempt at Indian raga. Its an odd thing to hear: I dont imagine that these daysunlike in the 1960stherere too many young singers interested in ragas. Ive got some great 60s recordings of La Monte Young singing wobbly ragas having studied after singer Pandit Pran Nath. Its obvious from the recordings that Young really cant sing properly but instead does something very much his own with it. Same here. Accompanied by an harmonium, its the most incorrect attempt at world music Ive ever heard. Instead, she takes a rather tired and cliched genre and makes it her own. Nowottnys gravelly mezzo slides up and down scales, eventually going far off the charts into new microtonal territorty.
File this one with Jeff Buckleys seminal Live at Sin-é, Bob Dylans acoustic appearances in 1966, Annette Peacocks hauntingly twisted masterpiece Im the One and Neil Youngs junked-out heart-wrenching acoustic work on Time Fades Away. I used to think that Nowottny was headed into Marianne Faithful territory; now its clear that shes closer to the avant model of Patty Waters.
Several years ago, upon the release of her first CD, I wrote the following in this paper: "In the best-case scenario, Nowottny will hook up with a sympathetic producer, one who will realize all her remarkable ideas into some extraordinary music, the likes of which weve never heard before. In the worst, shell go blazing into mainstream rock history the way of Smashing Pumpkins and Led Zeppelin." I was wrong. Neither has happened. Instead, like any other artist, shes following her own path, slowly honing her vision to perfection. And this disc is about as close to perfection as were going to see.