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Zedtone Records
Released: February 6, 2007 |
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Eleni Mandell
From her first album, 1999’s Jon Brion-produced Wishbone, to her fifth, 2004’s Afternoon (after which Los Angeles magazine named her best local singer), L.A.-based singer/songwriter Eleni Mandell has been feeling the love from critics and her fellow musicians, who have freely offered their respective kudos. Impressive, to be sure, but her career to this point is but a tantalizing extended build-up to Mandell’s superb new longplayer, Miracle of Five, which is at once the quintessence and the culmination of her vibrant oeuvre.
From the opening song, the hushed, intimate, “Moonglow, Lamp Low,” to the closing elegiac ballad “Miss Me,” the richly nuanced album maintains its mood and subtle momentum, creating a world of its own. This is without question the young artist’s most coherent album, and her most eloquent, optimistic and beautiful as well. Miracle of Five puts her in a new light, and on a new level of artistic achievement. Hearing her new album is like hearing this captivating artist for the very first time.
In order to optimize this crucial undertaking, Mandell assembled a group of talented and supportive players, including Wilco lead guitarist Nels Cline, X drummer DJ Bonebrake (who plays vibes here), her longtime rhythm section of drummer Kevin Fitzgerald and bassist Ryan Feves, reed player Jeff Turmes (James Harman, Badly Drawn Boy) and keyboardist Andy Kaulkin (Merle Haggard, R.L. Burnside), who also produced. Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) did the mixing.
“When I hear my songs, I definitely hear the classic American songwriter/showtunes influence,” says Mandell. “My mother took me to shows as a kid, and I listened to the soundtracks over and over. Then I became very taken with the songs of Gershwin, Porter, Rogers & Hammerstein as interpreted by Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. That was where my parents’ tastes intersected. My dad turned me on to practically everything else—Hank Williams, the Beatles, Bob Dylan.”
Mandell describes the largely autobiographical songs of Miracle of Five with characteristic candor—she can’t help telling the truth. The opening “Moonglow, Lamp Low,” she explains, “is a simple song about looking for love—again—and also looking out my window, which is where I wrote it, as the sun was going down. I think it sort of sweetly sets the tone of the record.”
That’s what happens with these extraordinary new songs—they begin with real-life experiences and blossom into multi-dimensional expressions of the human condition, all of it captured in the caressing yet charged sound of Mandell’s voice. So if you think you know Eleni Mandell, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.
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