11/19 - Class Actress

I was just thinking the other day about that time in the 1980s when Neil Young started experimenting with the "modern sound," and went almost avant garde. Or when the Rolling Stones went disco on Some Girls. And a few days ago my friend John and I were talking about the time in the 90s when Garth Brooks was the biggest thing on the airwaves, and all the money in the world bought him a whole lot of Yes-Men who failed to tell him that the Chris Gaines experiment (and that really silly soul patch) was a terrible terrible idea.

So, I got to thinking about the state of music today, where crossovers seem almost par for the course. Where no one bats an eye when rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson gears up to let Jack White "push her limits" in a new studio recording. Or where former Aussie quasi-West Coast Cosmic Country janglers from the Sleepy Jackson, can crank out a record like "Walking on a Dream" as part of the peppy-electro-club Empire of the Sun.

Plucking a little here and a little there, transmogrifying guitar riffs with beeps and boops and drum loops, a la post OK Computer Radiohead, somehow does the very opposite of challenging a musician's credibility. One year, I was driving across country to LA listening to Johnny Greenwood crunch out "The Bends," and a few years later I was falling asleep to droning electronic caterwauling and the incessant hum of the masses proclaiming new gods of mere men.

Today, shit, go electro. Why not? If you're in Brooklyn and you happen to have the equipement, why you're practically an electro outfit already.

Sometimes, maybe you're even doing the right thing. Elizabeth Harper, former coffehouse singer-songwriter earnest chanteuse-type, figured the remixes of her songs sounded cooler than the originals, so she tapped the producer and formed Class Actress with him and another fella. Taking cues, she claims, from early Madonna, Depeche Mode's "Some Great Reward" era, and the Human League, she layers her voice over the aforementioned beeps, boops and loops rather pleasantly. Songs are simple samples from analogue recordings, bolstered by the push-up underwire of vintage keys, and driven home by clear, precise, and warm vocals.

With friends like the fellows in Grizzly Bear, it's hard to go wrong. February 9th will see the release of an EP called Journal of Ardency which will feature Pitchfork-approved track "All the Saints" and "Careful What You Say," both synth-funk, Andrea True Connection worthy stacatto jams.

Video below is for an earlier, track that chronicles a transitional period between the coffeehouse and the coke den.



http://www.myspace.com/elizabethharper