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Friday, January 21, 2005
Pink Martini
I'm having a hard time getting the new CD from Pink Martini, Hang on Little Tomato, out of my CD player. Even by my increasingly widening definition of folk music that I use to determine what I play on the Online Folk Festival, it's not really folk music. But, gosh darn it, it's my station and I'm going to play it anyway.
The best description I can come up for it is "Eclectic World Neo-Lounge" This is wildly eclectic music, with influences including Latin dance music, American lounge and jazz, French chanson, with songs in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. The female vocalist, China Forbes, has a rich smooth voice, even if she doesn't take much opportunity to show her range, and the male vocalist, Timothy Nishimoto, has a voice well adapted to a variety of world styles, even if it's not as rich in quality as Forbes'.
Somehow they manage to blend all of this, make it all sound coherent together, and it comes of less like homage and more like something truly original, and I think that's by far the best thing that I can say about this record. It makes me want to track down their first CD, Sympathique.
The best description I can come up for it is "Eclectic World Neo-Lounge" This is wildly eclectic music, with influences including Latin dance music, American lounge and jazz, French chanson, with songs in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. The female vocalist, China Forbes, has a rich smooth voice, even if she doesn't take much opportunity to show her range, and the male vocalist, Timothy Nishimoto, has a voice well adapted to a variety of world styles, even if it's not as rich in quality as Forbes'.
Somehow they manage to blend all of this, make it all sound coherent together, and it comes of less like homage and more like something truly original, and I think that's by far the best thing that I can say about this record. It makes me want to track down their first CD, Sympathique.
