Alice Di Micele
Reverse the Flow
(Alice Otter Music)
★★★★★

FROM the outset, what draws attention to Oregon-based Alice Di Micele is the voice, sonorous and expressive in an emotional range that delivers pensive lyrics that gladden and edify with their perceptive observations.

“I wanna love the lines around my eyes, the sagging of my skin/ And every strand of silver hair that comes in/ I wanna love every single scar.../ Honouring this feminine body that I’m blessed to live in” she affirms in the magnificent I Wanna Love.

In the equally anthemic, rock idiom “J’Accuse” of Falling Through The Cracks  she makes clear where she stands politically: “And there’s no salvation in this land/ Where people worship profit, cause profit don’t give a damn.”

While the poignant One Little Word: “When I fell in love with her/ I didn’t know that I would be forsaken” is a brief meditation on homophobia.

A glorious collection from an artist on a momentous purple patch.

Tim Grimm
Bones of Trees
(Cavalier Recordings)
★★★★★

TIM GRIMM hails from Columbus, Indiana, a son of schoolteachers who inculcated in him an affection for literature and music. Later, studying theatre helped hone further his storytelling skills now abundantly evident in the discerning, politically probing lyrics of his songs.

Broken Truth, embroidered with delicate guitar work, is an acerbic look at US today under Trump’s nihilistic rule: “He’s got no shame, he’s got no soul/ He’s got no poetry inside to make him whole.”

The spirited Woody’s Landlord Revisited delights: “So Woody’s landlord — and this ain’t no bunk/  He was the Father of Donald Trump/ Making fortunes and buying land,/ let the rich get richer from the poor man’s hand.”

The ballad Barbed Wire Boys is a moving elegy to the rural workers of USA’s Midwest: “They were just like Atlas holding up the sky/ You never heard him speak, you never saw him cry.” 

Engrossing and admirable.

Tereza Catarov
Koren
(PKmusik)
★★★★

THIS is one of those tantalising offerings where a foreign language, in this case the rare dialect Palken of Banatian Bulgarians, becomes an instrumental sound in a palette that lures in with the familiar only to startle with the unexpected.

Koren means “root” and explains the Balkan middle-eastern tonalities seamlessly woven into jazz-based structures with intriguing sound combinations as in the spirited Zelen/Green or Du-te Dor.

But the London-based Tereza Catarov, born in Timisoara, Romania, also dwells on the lingering memories of her grandmothers’ songs, like Babi’s Intro, which provide the tonal timbre to bridge past and present.

The oft used vocalisations, as in Racka, are similarly Levantine in character but also, at times, reminiscent of Rachmaninov explorations.

Catarov’s nifty vocal skills were perfected at the Prins Claus Conservatorium Groningen, Netherlands, but Koren owes much to Yiorgos Bereris’ piano and Billy Pod’s drumming, both exceptional throughout.