Wednesday Sept 30
Angi West
at Blackbird Restaurant
8pm
Berklee-trained, keyboard-wielding Angi West hails from the mountains of western North Carolina, Cullowhee to be specific.
Even as a child, West was surrounded by people who believed in her music. The coaxing of old mountain women in calico dresses, elementary school janitors, Baptist preachers, and opinionated uncles convinced a small and slightly pitiful child that she was pretty damn special. So many people told Angi West she could sing that she eventually started to believe them. Now, in defiance of her disability (ocular cutaneous albinism), West writes across genres, while always calling her songs back to the mountains and to an abiding love of early operatic melodies."West boasts a delightfully eclectic vocal style that conjures at times Feist's forceful sensuality, Tori Amos' elegant swoops ‘n' purrs, Joni Mitchell's upper-register free-form flights and Bjork's chirpy eccentricity, all put to dramatic effect against a stately-but-edgy backdrop of piano, bass and percussion occasionally augmented by horns. Those Appalachian roots shine through at unexpected moments: the a capella "Let Them Sleep," what with West's subtle slide into a regional twang, could be a vintage folksong handed down for generations; the droning arrangement of "Home in Heaven" and West's gospel-informed vocal suggest the mountain Celtic tradition and time spent as a youth singing in a church choir." -Blurt
Whatever tag line is used to describe her music – post-folk, Appalachian anti-pop, operatic avant-garde folk rock, whimsy – she remains true to the melodies that move her and writes straight from the loneliness and hope that surround everyone.
www.theblackbirdrestaurant.com/
www.myspace.com/angiwest
www.angiwest.com/
