lady lazarus: home recordings EP

California’s Melissa Ann Sweat hasn’t long considered herself a musician but she’s been involved in artistic pursuits – writing, drawing and painting – since childhood. Playing keyboard, glockenspiel, accordion and ‘found instruments’ on this debut EP from her Sylvia Plath-derived alter ego, her musical naivety is well disguised. Sweat makes a convincing stab at Karen O channelling PJ Harvey, resulting in a consistently interesting and complex collection of songs.

Relationships pepper this personal record, with Sweat looking for a lover on ‘Bones’ and waving goodbye to another on ‘My Dear Man (Unrequited)’. There’s no hint of sentimentality though, more thoughtful introspection and an appetite for all life has to offer, both good and bad. Highlight ‘Master & Servant’ is not the Depeche Mode cover you might expect but a simultaneously charming yet terrifying original (“Lately the devil’s been talking to me / he’s been saying I’m some woman I’d rather not be”).

The minimal arrangements and work-in-progress production affords a sense of immediacy that might have been lost beneath a studio polish. While at times the lo-fi sound can get frustrating, Sweat paces through these seven tracks in under fifteen minutes and all are release-worthy compositions.

[Apartment Life; available on import only]

Written by: Richard Steele

Tags: home recordings EP, lady lazarus

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 8:50 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.