Dorks And Losers

Virginia-born singer-songwriter Rachael Yam­a­gata has the kind of mys­te­ri­ous voice you can only visu­al­ize as the pro­file of a woman’s lower face with kiss­able ruby red lips.

Even if you’ve never seen what she looks like, just by lis­ten­ing to her will you imag­ine replay­ing home videos of your for­mer girl­friend — the one that got away to be more spe­cific. Yam­a­gata doesn’t make it easy on you. With her lush vocals con­stantly remind­ing you of your eter­nal mis­take, you swear you were lis­ten­ing to a more down-to-earth ver­sion of Norah Jones.

For her sopho­more album Ele­phants… Teeth Sink­ing Into Heart, Yam­a­gata show­cases two sides of her musi­cal sen­si­bil­ity. The first side (Ele­phants…) is inti­mate, reveal­ing the pas­sion­ate, yet vul­ner­a­ble truths to love.

The title track “Ele­phants” is a bare, emo­tional over­load­ing attempt to ratio­nal­ize a break-up (“If the tiger shall pro­tect her young then tell me how did you slip by / All my instincts have failed me for once / I must have some­how slept the whole night”). “Sun­day After­noon” mim­ics the same theme but with­out the seem­ingly ran­dom lyrics (“Not gonna shed one more tear for you”).

The mood­i­ness and drama abruptly dis­ap­pears with the start of up-tempo pseudo-sugar pop of “Sidedish Friend”. If this was ole fash­ioned vinyl, the flip would have dis­rupted the con­ti­nu­ity enough to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the music but I guess jux­ta­pos­ing all of the tracks on one com­pact disc was the only way.

“I didn’t set out to make a two part album. We just fol­lowed the songs’ lyri­cal lead,” Yam­a­gata says on the press release, yet even she accepts the sec­ond half’s con­trast­ing style, “[… Teeth Sink­ing Into Heart] is like redis­cov­er­ing your back­bone after you’ve gone through the loss.” No song more overtly chal­lenges you to get over the loss than the vampire-themed “Pause The Tragic End­ing” with its sur­pris­ingly civil blunt­ness. Not a sin­gle man would hes­i­tate with such an upfront woman.

Few female vocal­ists could pull off such a mod­ern fem­i­nist ideal with­out sound­ing sub­mis­sive or appear­ing unla­dy­like. Maybe it’s because she isn’t blonde? That’s not my only the­ory, but the fact remains that Yam­a­gata han­dles her­self with the brand of matu­rity and gen­uine­ness shunned in this generation’s music world.

[pho­tos via Hilary Walsh]
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Track list:

Ele­phants…

1. Ele­phants
2. What If I Leave
3. Lit­tle Life
4. Sun­day After­noon
5. Ele­phants Instru­men­tal
6. Duet
7. Over And Over
8. Brown Eyes
9. Horizon

… Teeth Sink­ing Into Heart

1. Sidedish Friend
2. Acci­dent
3. Faster
4. Pause The Tragic End­ing
5. Don’t

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