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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

New Releases / Album Cellist Julia Kent Has Character

Posted by Kathy Fennessy on Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:02 PM

The Leaf Label

Julia Kent
Character
(The Leaf Label)

I don't know if it's the cello or the way that Julia Kent plays it, but Character, her third full-length, gives off a certain mournful, elegiac glow. I wouldn't describe it as depressing or morose, but it isn't uplifting or celebratory either.

There's just something innately sorrowful about the instrument (Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York version of "Something in the Way" with Lori Goldston is one particularly exquisite example). A player would have to struggle to make it sound cheap or cheesy, but I'm not likely to turn to cello music to get me going in the morning or to brighten a dark day.

Unlike Arthur Russell, who sang as he played, Kent opts for an instrumental approach. It may be a lack of imagination on my part—or a lack of familiarity with cello-centered works—but I feel like I'm listening to a film score, even if she didn't intend these 10 tracks for that purpose (to Dummy magazine, she explained, "Character is an exploration of an inner geography; a sort of personal chart").

Swedish label mates Roll the Dice work their moody magic on this bonus track:

<a href="http://music.juliakent.com/track/transportation-delivered-by-roll-the-dice">Transportation (Delivered By Roll The Dice) by Julia Kent</a>

Songs cover a range of tones and colors. The spooky "Kingdom" would fit perfectly in a film about a haunted house. Rumbling percussion and muted whooshes meld the meteorological and the biological as if ghosts were trying to communicate with the living. Lacking the corporeal means to speak, they sigh and moan instead.

The other songs aren't quite that dark, like "Salute," which captures a hopeful, day-after-disaster feel, musical embodiment of the kind of gratitude that follows a storm as survivors wake to find branches scattered across the ground, while all major structures remain intact (or like the ending of The Poseidon Adventure).

Kent's touch is too light for Character to qualify as heavy or gloomy, but it's a contemplative record, designed more for those who like to lose themselves in music than for those who expect it to lift them up and send them on their way.