[Reviewed by Peter Marks]
What we have here is an artist who moves between worlds, the realms of what is and what was are where she’s happiest. This is a delicate and highly refined album full of ghosts. The wraiths of personal history glide across each of the eight songs on here which move slowly in and out of focus; if your mind’s eye can manage to follow all the paths they carve out you’ll be doing better than I am. A place to get lost and not mind, a land where the sun is always setting and while the leaves rustle up and down the lonely road a carrion crow can be heard in the distance angrily protesting your very presence here. How it knows is unimportant.
How Evi Vine does what she does is also beyond the realm of understanding. There are two core members here and a myriad of exceptional musicians along for the ride this time out. Hard as it may be to believe, this is only her second record; all the glittering promises of desire can be accessed while ‘Give Your Heart to the Hawks’ plays out. It is exhilarating, it is euphoric and it is ecstasy incarnate… what is contained herein may not be the one you reach for around others but when alone you’ll grow to accept nothing else. I don’t imagine there’s much middle ground with regard to the music she’s involved with: Evi will pull out everything in her arsenal to elicit feeling and if that means dangling her words in the air to do so, well, you might just try to fly
There’s a serenity here, a delicious solitude which no advertising barrage can break. Not of this world? I daresay so! I’d be intrigued to know how she managed to pull this off. All those whispering, wailing voices that move through our thoughts and their emotional cousins who play havoc with our hearts have been trapped on this record. If this is the harbinger of what dark electronics can be harnessed into serving as a backbone to then 2015 surely is going to have its fair share of remarkable delicacies. “Its hard to be heard…” she softly intones, effortlessly serving as a medium betwixt the worlds of light and dark. Rhythms shuffle along behind her, tension builds; everything works in concert and begins pulling taut enough to snap like a rope worn down to the bitterest ends.
She isn’t after answers nor does she try proffering any. Sort it out yourselves, these are her experiences in the void. The hymns of ether, songs of empty and desolate praise.
People will no doubt have comparisons they wish to draw between what this outfit craft and those others have done. Fine. Have at it then, professionals. I hear some heavy issues being worked through in what Evi does. This isn’t just a record of fragile arrangements nor could you conclude that she’s just a clever chanteuse singing prettily. It’s therapy we’re listening in on, everyone. The raw, ragged and flawed imperfections of life are on display. We get to hear just how hard it is to hold it all together long enough to accomplish much of anything. Intensely personal tracks cut from a cloth which she wears on her travels in search of whatever gorgeous mysteries lie beyond the horizon.
Evi Vine – Give Your Heart to the Hawks
self-released
CD/LP 2015
Santa Sangre 