Page 4 • The Battalion
Monday • September 4,
Folk gains an innocent style
The album jacket of Tapping
The Wheel says it all —Jane Kel
ly Williams is the kind of singer
who likes to sit in her garden
with a guitar on her knee.
She’s natural and earthy.
Her simple, down-to-earth mu
sical style suits her just fine.
Sounding like a cross between
Austin’s Shawn Colvin and the
little girl next door, she man-
Jane Kelly Williams
Tapping the Wheel
Parachute Records
★★★ 1/2 (out of five)
“Capitalizing on
Engineering
Opportunities
Second Floor MSC
Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 6 & 7
9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Free Four-Man Scramble Golf Tournament at
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Tuesday, Sept 5 (sign up by Friday, Sept 1)
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See
For more information, call the SEC office at 847-8567,
or see our booth in the Zachry Lobby.
Now Through September 8, 1995
Vocal Auditions Open to ALL Male Students
Membership in the Corps of Cadets
is NOT required.
Room 003 MSC (Downstairs) 845-5974
Please stop by to make an appointment
Rehearsal Schedule: MTWRF 4:10-5:15
Singing Cadets Open Rehearsal
5:00 P.M. MSC Flagroom
Fridays Before Every Home Football Game.
Dates: 9/15, 10/13, 10/27, 11/17 and 12/1
Williams
ages to be innocent without be
ing sappy.
Williams does not sound as
charmingly bitter as Colvin can
and lacks some of the cynical
edge that helped make Colvin’s
Fat City such a powerful album,
but Colvin has almost 15 years
of life experience on Williams.
She is getting there — listeners
should just give her time to have
a few more bad relationships.
Though Williams does not al
ways demonstrate a distinctively
original voice or an innovative
songwriting style, she is consis
tently solid. She doesn’t chal
lenge the genre much but shows
that she can repeat what’s been
done with a nice flair.
Her talent seems to lie most
ly in her story telling, which is
the sign of a good folk singer.
One sign that she is a folk
singer, and not just a pop vocal
ist, are her lyrics — there are
so many of them. Pop singers
often repeat phrases over and
over, while folk singers cram as
many words into one verse as
they possibly can.
She writes an especially hon
est and powerful song, "Carry
Him,” about her mentally re
tarded brother in which she
pleads for help, and asks “What
do you give a man, when you
don’t know what he needs?”
Williams does particularly
well when singing about the:
old tragedy of a failed romance,
She covers this ground on
“Emotional Memory” and
“Breaking In To The Past,"in
does the subject justice on whs
is probably her strongest song,I
“I’m Just Feeling it Now.” She
sings, “Careful before we call
ourselves poets, for when did
we ever keep a single sincere
word?/Careful before we call
ourselves writers, when theinl|
that flowed out from our pens
was blown off the paper by the
first strong wind.” Listeners
would never hear these lyrics
on a local radio station, that's
for sure.
In this song, and a few others,
like “15 Seconds of Grace,” her
lyrics, chock full of profound ob
servations, disguise her youth
and show that with a few more
years under her belt she will have]
the maturity needed to share the
stage with seasoned folk singers
like liory Block, Nanci Griffith,
and of course, Colvin.
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expe
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By Erin Hill
The Battalion
SAN
Move over Mariah Carey. Move way over, and
shut the door behind you. Alternative pop has a.
songstress with a soprano range to rival the afore
mentioned queen of the Top 40 world. Her name is
Heather Nova, she hails from Bermuda originally
— there is a track called “Island” — and her al
bum Oyster is
fantastic.
With her
voice, Nova
could be the
’90s Cyndi Lau-
per, but what
Nova has over
Lauper is sub
stance. Instead
of “Girls just
wanna have fun,” Nova’s message is girls don’t
wanna be shunned.
A few former lovers get worked over and spat
out in Nova’s latest album. In the song “Blue and
Black,” she sings, “I never felt so clean/You did
the sin supreme.”
Nova’s music is a way for her to right old
wrongs, and air dirty laundry. For example, she
sings about someone who “got her pregnant,” and
another who “touched [her] sister.” Ouch.
If you started with Sarah McLachlan’s ethereal
voice, added PJ Harvey’s dark attitude and mari
nated it with something, anything, from Windham
Hills, you’d have Oyster.
The voice is what will attract listeners. It just
catches you and sits you down — in part because of
Nova’s use of soaring high notes, and also because
her voice is just so clear. But if folk music fans lis
ten closely, the attitude is disconcerting, and the
Harvey-esque tunes like “Verona” and “Sugar” are
what could alienate Nova from the mainstream
music world.
Her songs are infectious, catchy and compelling,
but there is too much behind the surface for her to
be really successful in today’s market, which is
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Nova
nothing to be ashamed of. She doesn’t seem to be
one too concerned with record sales anyhow.
As the story goes, Nova went to New York,
walked into Columbia records unannounced, and
handed them her demo when she was trying to get
her start. She seems refreshingly out of the Bill
board Charts loop.
Still, she can be content with what she has cre
ated. She manages to use her voice to convey a
wide spectrum of emotions, even bitterness, with
ease and beauty, but doesn’t overdo the vocal gym
nastics like some other women vocalists do — Do
lores O’Riordan of The Cranberries comes to mind.
Nova is a good mix of what is best in the alter
native women’s scene — music that’s not too hard
but not too sweet, scathing lyrics, beautiful instru
mentation, agonizing relationship and an overall
experience that doesn’t need really to be analyzed,
just enjoyed.
“Doubled Up,” in fact, could very well be de
scribing her music as she sings, “Feels good,
feels like poetry / Don’t ask me to explain it, just
feels good.”
MONDAY
NIGHT
FOCFTOAUi
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99 < £ pints of our handcrafted beer.
Happy Hour:
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Daily
Hours:
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201 Dominik
(Just off Texas)
693-4148
College Station, Texas
Begim
& Wes
Mon. Sept
15 - 7:30
825/studei
Jitterb
Mon. Sept
7;45-9pm
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Int. C
Wed. Oct 1
7:45-9pm
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Ballroc
Mon. Oct 2
15 - 7:30j
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Ballroc
Sun. Octob
6-9pm
815/studen
Bellydc
T/Th, Sept
6-7pm
835/studen)
B
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J^oodw
Sept 1
7 e Pm
*45/
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/student
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6.7 Oct 23.
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/student
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7 0c, 17.