Furnished Rooms

Electro-acoustic pop with jazz, classical, and world influences. Acoustic bass and subtle machine-generated beats carry the rhythms, cello, accordion, and weary, exhausted-almost vocals set the mood and carry the melodic load, while violin fills and solos launch some of the tracks into a higher plane. In any case, very enjoyable as low key and eclectic pop music. Mostly originals with a couple of covers tossed in, and the lyrics are interesting to clever to poetic throughout. Recommended.

*** 1. Swingin’ bass with contrasting mournful accordion and violin and world-weary
vocals
** 2. Upbeat and assertive, snappy even, but a little bit too low-calorie
** 3. Off-blues with a simple chord progression but the mechano-percussion somehow
more prominent and thus, more otherworldly
* 4. Spare, mid-tempo; the cello and the accordion provide the more interesting
aspects
*** 5. Sweet, swaggering enumerations over a strong bassline and a great violin solo;
lyrics by one Emily Dickinson
*** 6. The Gershwin standard, but the “livin’ is easy” line is belied by the tired vocals and
the naturally weary cello and accordion; only the violin provides lift; superb in its
revisionism
** 7. The “shiny machine” of the lyrics and the reserved but periodically spit out vocals
remind me of Fiona Apple’s “Extraordinary Machine”, but on downers
*** 8. A folksy romp, practically; great imagery in the lyrics
9. Nondescript, flat
*** 10. Kern and Hammerstein standard, given the downer treatment but here, more
expectedly than on tk. 6; the strained elements of the cello and the bass work well
with the inexorable Old Man River’s tale
11. Bouncy but far from the best tracks here
*** 12. Cold, almost industrial electronic drone and keening, multitracked vocals. Wow!