Filed under: album, review, video | Tags: 2008, adam smith, casey dienel, music, white hinterland
White Hinterland
Phylactery Factory •••½
Dead Oceans
A trite observation to begin with: initial listens can be unfair. My overriding impression of Casey Dienel’s debut album under the White Hinterland moniker the first time round was of a jazzy Joanna Newsom. Evidence for: wordy narratives with metaphors jostling for position, all sung in a unique female voice that occasionally verges on the childlike.
But this would succumb to the music writer’s curse of the easy comparison. While Newsom’s ghost definitely lurks somewhere near Dienel’s vocal cords, it’s hardly a full-on possession. Dienel’s range of expression is far more limited, for a start; where Newsom has developed into a cross between Billie Holiday and Björk after breaking the world fag-smoking record, Dienel genuinely does sound like a kid sometimes, with much of the reediness and timidity that implies. That such seeming naivety rarely detracts from the songs is a testament both to her ability to create sympathetic soundworlds for her songs and her skill at phrasing and intonation.
