I always get a little nervous when a CD arrives in the mail
\nmarked ‘File under: Contemporary Folk\/New Age.’ It generally means
\nthat the promotions person for the label had no bloody clue what
\nexactly it was, so threw it into a nice big genre and hoped somehow
\nit would stick. Actual new age folk music is nice, sometimes even
\ninteresting, but usually another genre in disguise. However, this
\ntime I was wrong, and I admit it. Shantala — otherwise known as
\nNew Age instrumentalist Benjy Wertheimer and his wife Heather on
\nvocals — is indeed New Age, is indeed folk, and is indeed rather
\nlovely. Their latest CD
\nChurch Of Sky<\/i> has a lot going for it, and is definitely
\nworth a listen.<\/p>\n
For starters, Heather can sing. I mean, really sing; she has a
\nlovely breathy and precise alto that wraps around words like a
\nlover’s embrace and sends them winging their way into your soul.
\nShe can alternately be sultry and transcendent, playful and
\nintense, and is a delight to listen to. Though I haven’t heard a
\nlot of Benjy Wertheimer’s work, I have had some exposure to it, and
\nhe’s a good instrumentalist and a great producer and engineer. That
\nproduction shines on
\nChurch Of Sky<\/i>; the Wertheimers working together create a
\nrecording that’s stylish, delicate, and perfect, guitar strings and
\nbreathy vocals incredibly clear.<\/p>\n
There’s no getting around the fact, however, that this is
\nprimarily a showcase for Heather’s songwriting skills, and they’re
\npretty damn good. She has an astonishing capacity for turns of
\nphrase (the lyrics to “Dance Me” alone are some of the most poetic
\n— and erotic — I’ve heard in a very long time), and genuinely
\nseems to have fun with words. Some people are poets first and
\nmusicians second; Heather Wertheimer seems to be one of them.<\/p>\n
Other songs worth mention on
\nChurch Of Sky<\/i> include the sweet and haunting “Etched In
\nStone,” the poignant images of “Madrone,” the triumphant title
\ntrack, and the heartbreaking “Going Twice,” which captures a lost
\nparent in three minutes better than some works of art that take
\nhours. Only on “There’s No Safe Place” do the lyrics cross over
\nfrom thought-provoking to perhaps a bit overly earnest; maybe
\nthat’s me, as any song about the Holocaust for me suffers from
\ncomparison to Fred Small’s “Denmark 1943.”<\/p>\n
Genres aside (and frankly, by the time I was done listening to
\nthis I decided it was particularly liberal newgrass and left it at
\nthat),
\nChurch Of Sky<\/i> is a wonderful, wonderful piece of music and
\ndefinitely worth a visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7048],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-38028","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-shantala","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38028"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}