Of Joni (Mitchell) and Jenny (Dalton)...

Just last week, we took a look back at Joni Mitchell's classic bridging album For the Roses... Shortly afterward I spent some time listening to For the Roses during my daily commute. The next day, in went Jenny Dalton's Rusalka's Umbrella into the mp3 player in our New Beetle. Mrs. Bear, who'd never heard this album before, said after hearing the first few songs, "She's listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell, hasn't she?" Well, maybe, maybe not... I'd say that if Jenny has not studied Joni she has at least learned to channel Joni's heart, her spirit and her soul.

Here's an experiment for you. Take your copy of Rusalka's Umbrella and proceed to track number 12, Snow Mazes of Norway. Then, beg, borrow or steal a friend's copy of Joni's Roses and play track 7, See You Sometime. [Or listen to both at You Tube.] You'll notice the similarities... Each is almost a mirror-image of the other, not quite the same, but far more the same than different.

This is not meant in anyway to be negative, not at all. I have been a huge fan of Jenny's and remain so, so understand the point I'm trying to make here...

Being a musician who just happens to be talented enough to produce music that reminds some people of a genius, Joni Mitchell, is a tremendous gift. For me, saying that a musician is in Joni Mitchell's league is the very highest compliment that I know how to pay. This is the compliment I mean to pass on here to Jenny Dalton.

Dear Paul (a song by Jenny Dalton)

Dear Paul, I am writing
wondering how you have been
Dear Paul, I've been reading
I fear I'm reading too much into this

Give me something more
Give me something strong
Give me something I can believe in
Give me something more
Give me something strong
I know something's wrong with this picture

Dear Paul, I have thrown out
everything that I believe in
I can't decide if I'm a nihilist or a fatalist
today

Dear Paul, I know I've been
a little bit out of touch, a little bit out of
reach
But now I'll sit beside you
Take my hand, let's see what happens

And he says, "Give me something more.
Give me something strong.
Give me something I can believe in."
And I said, "I can't give you more.
This is all I've got.
This is everything I believe in."

Photo: flickr (slagheap)

Keeping Up With Jenny Dalton...

Unfortunately, we did not notice this before the fact but singer-songwriter-poet-writer Jenny Dalton last month traveled from the Twin Cities in Minnesota to play at the Vaudeville Mews in Des Moines, Iowa. (Munchy the cat loves the name Mews!)

The website Rock Iowa said this about Jenny at that time: Backed by moody piano, Jenny Dalton's vocals have been described as beautiful, haunting and classic. She has drawn comparisons to Kate Bush and Tori Amos, but Jenny Dalton's one of a kind.

Well written. I have seen Kate Bush perform live and I second the statement.

From now on, we'll attempt to keep better track of Jenny's concert schedule, and cross our fingers in the hope that she will one day make it to the left coast of the U.S. Until then, above is a view of a beautiful poster that advertised one of Jenny's recent home state performances.

Better Known Vacancy - a song by Jenny Dalton

BETTER KNOWN VACANCY

The sun is weary as it makes its way down
The sound of gravel crunches under my feet
as I walked up to that house where the water rushed in
Clenching sand in my fist, the tide was reaching for me

Sometimes I wish I could float back to you
where it was safe and sound 'cause it's a jungle out there
It's funny how they'll always drive me...

The space is empty, more than it already was
We're disassembled, let's pick up and dust off
I woke up in that house when the water rushed in
Clenching sand in my fist, the tide was reaching for me

Sometimes I wish I could float back to you
where it was safe and sound 'cause it's a jungle out here
It's funny how they'll always drive me
to that better known vacancy

A Review of Jenny Dalton's Rusalka's Umbrella

Lately we've been quite interested in Jenny Dalton, whose music and lyrics remind us of a young Joni Mitchell; although her lyrics are a bit more oblique than Joni's. In interviews Jenny has said that her songs are more like what she remembers of dreams than actual events in her life... Maybe this is why, so many years ago, Bob Dylan labeled some of his songs as dreams.

With this in mind, here is a re-print of a review published on September 24, 2008 in the Twin Cities Daily Planet. The review -- abridged here -- was written by Jay Gabler, the Daily Planet's arts editor.

MUSIC NOTE: Babushka, babushka... Rusalka?

It grew on me. It took a few days of driving around the Twin Cities listening to Jenny Dalton's new album Rusalka's Umbrella, but it finally got under my skin.

It's a concept album and the concept is water. The songs (and accompanying book) are inspired, Dalton's web site notes, by "a collage of influences including Twin Peaks, the Morton Salt Girl, The Shipping News, ghosts, Memoirs of a Geisha, folktales, The Fall by Albert Camus, the 35W bridge collapse, mermaids and more." I don't think I caught all that on the record, but nor did I ever figure out... what the hell happened to Billy Shears.

There's an aptly Eastern European tint to a couple of the songs (in Slavic folklore, a rusalka is a water spirit)... Over Stingesquely decorous arrangements, Dalton lilts like Joni Mitchell with the trilling of Rs and swallowed vocals of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan. Taken as a package, though, the nearest point of reference is the iconoclastic siren Kate Bush -- perhaps the only other living artist who could put such genuine feeling into lyrics like "Six points on a snowflake, eight arrows on a compass/My brother with a host family playing drums for the Norwegians." Move along, folks, move along -- it's all part of the concept.

If the album is a little perplexing at first, by the third or fourth listen it does cohere, and it's well programmed to sweep the listener from the ominous opener "Better Known Vacancy" to the piano-pounding boogie "The Turn and the River" into the strange realms of the album's heart, climaxing with the elegant ballad "Dear Paul" and the surging "Puddle Jump" before depositing us back among "The Snow Mazes of Norway."

I'm sorry I missed the album release show, where the music was dramatized. I'm sure the interpretation wasn't entirely literal... It occurs to me that from the album's lyrics you could assemble an alternate universe Village People: the pirate, the Viking, the test pilot, the surfer, and the sheriff.