Sarah Donner - Black Hole Heart (2016)

Written by William Cline, posted by blog admin

Website: https://www.sarahdonner.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahdonner/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahdonner?lang=en

MUSIC VIDEO: (PHOENIX)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j13Jwyb-AnA

New Jersey headquartered singer/songwriter Sarah Donner has earned a certain amount of cachet in indie circles thanks to the success of her track “The Motherf**cking Pterodactyl Song”, but her talents extend much further than entertaining audiences with her wit and idiosyncratic sense of humor. The release Black Hole Heart amply illustrates this point. The album’s twelve songs bristle with effortless musicality thanks to her melodic gifts and fluid guitar playing, but their quality is largely driven by the light touch of her emotive vocals and exceptional songwriting skills. There’s a variety of emotions driving the tracks on this release, but those emotions are all united by a guiding intelligence and fully developed artistic sensibility that’s rare in both the mainstream and indie scene alike. There are few performers today who wield such a compelling balance of probing intimacy and full on musical ingenuity.

“Phoenix” explores a relatively common but durable metaphor in the arts and with loose, easy going confidence embodied by the acoustic guitar work and Donner’s vocal. She conveys the message behind the song with clear as a bell singing, but her emotive qualities help her stand out much more. Coupling her emotive range with evocative lyrics lightly touching on the myth underpinning the concept while artfully connecting them to her every day reality is the cherry on top of this delicious confection.  The title song has a sense of the grand surround it that’s inescapable – it’s due to two different factors contributing to this. The first is the lightly orchestration defining the track’s construction and the second is Donner’s masterfully handled vocal. Her voice is simply towering at key points during this track. Her storytelling powers emerge in full on the track “Tamsen Donner 1847” and the understated despair behind the narrative is nicely tempered by the sensitivity and devotion of Donner’s narrator. The musical accompaniment is understated as well but it has a crystalline beauty that’s quite appropriate for the track.

She brings organ and trumpet into play on “The Flood”, but they never assume any sort of dominant role and Donner does a superb job incorporating the instruments into her customary approach. Donner continues indulging her penchant for myth and metaphor with the track “Albatross” and it’s one of the album’s most successful straight ahead folk songs. There’s some double-tracking of Donner’s vocal during this performance that creates some interesting effects, especially because of her highly stylized take on this song. “Big Big Heart” is a piano driven ballad and speaks with an unflinchingly vulnerable voice. The lyrics are the sort that says more than their mere words convey and work splendidly within this arrangement. Even the most cynical music fan will find it difficult to not admire the sentiment and style informing this gem. One of the more special tracks distinguishing Black Hole Heart is “All The Things”. The terse acoustic guitar, fluid percussion, and duet vocal from Donner and guest Michael McLean are about as perfectly realized as such a piece could ever hope to be.  It’s moments like this performance and many others that make Sarah Donner’s Black Hole Heart such an enjoyable and rewarding musical experience.

Kittens Slay Dragons - Big Big Heart (2017)

OFFICIAL: http://kittensslaydragons.com/
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TWITTER: https://twitter.com/meowslaydragons

Written by Aaron Ellis, posted by blog admin

Sarah Donner’s electronica project, Kittens Slay Dragons, is definitely s departure from the folk offerings she has customarily served up for listeners. The ten song collection covers a remarkable amount of stylistic ground despite confining itself to a musical style not often associated with moments of expansive beauty. The electronic side of Big Big Heart radiates genuine warmth and musicality that experienced listeners, perhaps, may not expect when they dive into Big Big Heart for the first time. Much of the album’s success can be rightly subscribed to the power of Donner’s voice to overcome any musical backing. Her voice is the guiding force behind this release, much more than any electronic backing, and brings listeners into each song with much in the way of preamble. Big Big Heart is equal parts enlightening and entertaining.

“Gatekeeper” is an outstanding beginning to the project. There’s a wellspring of emotion coming from Donner’s voice that’s impossible to ignore and it’s juxtaposed against an electronic backing track that’s bright, warm, and lively. It’s an excellent introduction to the style of the album and its consistent strengths. The shimmering synthesizer opening to “Smile Pretty” helps sets the stage for one of Big Big Heart’s best numbers. The slowly developing vocal melody plays quite well off against the kinetic electronic backing and she once again invests a style not typically known for its emotive depths with a voice that aches, yearns, and hits its mark each time out. The throbbing synthesizer cloud opening “Love Is Surgery” is soon joined by a steady pulse and lightly colored synthesizer fills lay over top. The vocal melody is relatively simple, but draws you in immediately; it’s the chorus, however, that finds Donner’s vocal reaching the song’s peak, but it’s handled with artful restraint. The title song is much more remarkable in every respect. Donner’s dream-like vocal melody has a graceful lilt lacking from even the finest tracks elsewhere on this album and when she unleashes the full force of emotional power, the song benefits even more. There’s some discreet backing vocals incorporated into this song that further sweeten the performance.

“Queer and Square” has a fat bass thud and swirling synth lines as a setting for one of Donner’s most emphatic vocals. She conjures a genuine bite for this number that she bears down on even more with the song’s chorus. The late album track “Symbols in the Sky” has a stronger groove than anything so far on Big Big Heart, but she never neglects making melody an important facet of the song’s success. “Eggs” is another surprising cut. Electric piano dispels the synthesizer spell hanging over much of the album and represents one of the best pieces of writing on this recording. Her vocals bring the same mix of technical excellence and impassioned self-expression that define many of the other songs, but it’s even greater here and she’ll leave many feeling rather breathless by her virtuoso talents. Kittens Slay Dragons’ Big Big Heart is one of the best electronica based releases in recent memory and has the sort of vulnerability coupled with immense artistry we’re lucky to find on any modern album.