Monday, August 13, 2012

Maria Neckam, Unison

Wow, Maria Neckam. She has a very expressive and precise voice and she uses it to put across her very original songs. That is, on her album Unison (Sunnyside 1321). It's her and a good small band dedicated to realizing her unusual style of songwriting. Aaron Parks does some very nice keywork in particular. Nir Felder gets off a good solo or two on guitar also.

Maria's songs are about relationships, love, the cosmos, and show a sensibility that is perceptive and warm, smart and visionoid. Her melodies combine singsong symmetry and the opposite, asymmetrical odd-time meters or mathematically unusual phrase lengths.

And what counts is that the music works and the performances are excellent. The combination of voice and song makes for something quite unusual and inviting when you let it come inside you. It's jazzed, progged, and decidedly not your standard rehashed fare.

If you have adventure in you, this should be heard. But not just once. Because you might not get it with once. An artist, she is!

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