Varied and charmingly complex. Multitracked real instruments, vocals and drum machine with heavy mixing. Lots of distortion. This one-woman singer/songwriter/musician/producer is not unlike P.J. Harvey (without Harvey’s magical-realist womanhood thing) or Björk (without being so Scandinavian). Her voice, though not ostentatiously weird, is not exactly like anyone else’s that I can think of. It reminds me most of Billie Holliday’s; it has her low smoky knowing kittenish qualities, and it’s no indictment of Wells to say that she lacks Lady Day’s full power and irony. She’s also a pretty good lyricist. FCC’s on tracks 6 and 8(?). No bad tracks; something for everyone, whether you like electronica, folk, classical, blues or hip-hop.
1: Childish lugubrious piano intro. Explosive canned percussion. Gets bassier and beatier. Not super-polished sounding. Balance of percussion and piano is (to my ears) bad. In order for the percussion not to be painful, the piano is nearly inaudible. Percussion creepily switches back and forth between channels. Meanders a bit in the middle. Instrumental.
2: Klezmer-y, with a beat. Violin, clarinet sound, and dulcimer with a bass beat. Simple beat, but complex percussion sounds. Breathy moaning wordless vocal intro. Knowing low faraway distorted female vocals.
3: Distorted thin-sounding banjo-y guitars, paired with rhythmic bass and growly melodic guitars. Interesting percussion. Shout-y distorted male voice as occasional rhythmic element. Instrumental.
4. Distorted swingy up-key intro. Distorted 50’s-style crooner music. Mellow. Sexy, in a barely-legal sort of way.
5. Ominous bass, electronic beats, and violin. Moany far-away vocals. Overdubbed higher-pitched vocal phrases on other channel. What sounds a little like “fuck it” is actually bucket. Rap vocals in the middle.
6. Acoustic guitar. Mellow beat. FCC: “fuck”.
7: A dance cover of “I Cover the Waterfront.” Occasional beat discontinuities.
8: Growly angry guitars. FCC? “piece of shit” Lovely middle eastern-ish soprano descant over the melody. Male and female rap vocals. Explosive percussion. “Masturbator”: FCC? Sped-up “chipmunks” vocals. Pretty dense sound by the end.
9. Instrumental. Vibrato organ-ish sound. Mellow but not slow beat.
10: Slide-y acoustic guitar. Swingy country. Pretty good forward momentum. Key change keeps things from getting boring.
11: Quiet. Noir-ish. Cool jazz beat. Lyrics don’t go anywhere. Jazz trombone part.
12: Strummy picky country guitars. Wailing folky vocal chorus, with speakier verses. Political (war on terror). Peppy, poppy, and pleasant.
13: Klezmer-y violin. Bluesy. Nice overdubbed vocals. Strummy intense bridge. Like a Tom Waits song.
14: Plaintive piano and violin. Loud steady beat. Sampled vocals used as rhythmic device. “Music for geek love.” Speaky.
15: Complex rhythm fading quickly in and out against blues-inflected slow baroque piano. Instrumental. Fun.
16: Scrape-y industrial sounding percussion. High vocals. Lovely, piercing. Dulcimer again. A lot like Björk.
17: Starts with mellow percussion and low vibes. Low husky vocals. Clearer spoken vocals. Social commentary.
18: Debussy-ish piano. Treble-heavy impressionistic. Descending. Increasingly crashing bass chords. Not the best musicianship in the world. Instrumental.

-Kathryn