what is it about veda hille?

V E D A H I L L E

"you do not live in this world alone"

i'd made it halfway through the album and my heart was about to "bust from enthusiastic overuse". it's that good. it's a sound drug.

how do i love it? the heartbeat (there really is a heart beating!) is an underline to the whole album. my favorite tracks are the love and absence songs, but we've got everything from soldiers of fortune to bizarre samples and voice manipulation. she gets a groove going you wouldn't expect from the jazzy "path of a body" singer-songwriter. the instrumental pieces link the strongly defined songs into a complete album. i think the songs themselves are her best yet in some ways, and she's growing in all directions. i can't decide whether she's deconstructing her lyrics or applying so many associations her voice breaks with their weight.

i'm a sucker for poets who sing, whether or not their voices are made for it. on "you do not live in this world alone", though, veda's in control of her voice and tone consistently for the first time. i don't know how she can make me feel so intensely what she wants me to whenever she wants me to, some canadian tree devil probably taught her. gentle and soft to fierce to creepy and disturbing, she's a balladeer, a rock star and an aural artist. heartbroken, in love, innocent and happy. veda delivers all those disparate genres she liked to dabble in on her previous records: the strident folk of "Path of a Body" to the bloody dark rock of "Spine" and the instrumental and mood music of "picture".

She's killer at reinterpreting literature in song, as she showed us in "Here is a Picture: Songs for E. Carr". Lyrically , it's a cut-and-paste job of painter/writer Emily Carr's memoirs into compositions and songs that evoke episodes of a lonely, difficult and rewarding artist's life. She's apparently done a lot of this on the new album, and she carries these personae well right next to her own, extremely personal compositions. you can hear her classical training and she's capable of textures in her songwriting--as is her band. those other instruments are more than "background noise" or album-only filler. I can't categorize her as rock, or as avant, or as folk, though she's a singer-songwriter, I suppose. She'll throw you. I can't imagine living without these songs in my head.

Anyway, a song by song (as I choose 'em) rundown of Alone with some of my favorite lyrics:

3xthin:
a happy chirpy sound (the heartbeat--blood pump!--as percussion instrument) and a desolate story, as mother sings for her kidnapped child. incredible understatement and yearning.

"where you been my bonny one
you were blond and now you're brown
give him back"

Ponybride:
"there's nothing wrong with feeling good
there's nothing wrong with feeling great.
pop music and good headphones
naked with your stereo
not much sleep but healthy shine
i feel better all the time"

even inane "bright candy lemon pop" is healthy if it makes you feel good, sings the indiest of the indie (she's canadian and self-produced, how's that for marginal?). sometimes music does sound better naked! Kinnie Starr's background vocals make this sunny number super-sweet. it's hard not to smile when you hear it. especially when veda asks you to be her ponybride! okay!

Born Lucky:
a love song to sounds like crashing waves and violins. happy like kittens and babies.

"our woman afraid of nothing
we are the wild things in her house
she says
this is sleeping
this is fright
this is not but half the fight
this is the only story that you will tell yourself alone at night"

Batterie:
wow. a re-feeling of one of my favorite John Donne poems. the hearbeat pulses.

"god beat down my door...
rail rail rail...
break my heart
unfaithful"

Williamsburg Bridge
a rousing march-like drumbeat drives this ballad. i love the cadence of the lyrics. the refrain, "Last night, there was an accident on the Williamsburg bridge" grows more haunting as the story progresses.

"now me and my companion
we watch each other sleep and play
weren't really friends in high school
things grow together strange"

All Fur:
a sad sad sound; a really great orgasm. Intense, disturbing, awe-ful, awe-some. But those strings detract from the stripped song.

Peculiar Value:

"Peculiar" is my new favorite word. I almost missed this song on first listen. The one time I've been lucky enough to see Veda, I believe she said that "peculiar value" was ascribed to the voice in a recording contract. So I think it's about talent and art.

"It's a fight to be good, a good fighter.
You asked for ecstatic, you got it.
You gotta admit a peculiar value
So peculiar it's practically invisible."

addendum for a new listener:

some of her compositions are very avant-garde, some of them are as folk as they come, some of them are almost perfect and some are rather strident. i don't know what i'd start with, because every cd and even song feels different, but "spine" is hard-rocking and aggressive, "picture" is a biographical melange of emily carr, and the new one is all over the place emotionally with lots of samples.

epilogue:

if i could have my choice of lullaby singers, i would choose the creaky voice of veda next after my grandmother (who varied between alto and soprano mid-phrase; church and its hymns were amusing but i was too sweet then to be embarassed). Veda could make even "here comes the sandman, stepping so lightly" something new and wondrous.

11.23.99 - rev. 5.31.04

links:
vedahille.com
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