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March 05, 2007
scrounge for roots and shoots
Nicole Atkins has the sort of soft-edged, dusky voice that delivers bad news in the most alluring way; it's easy to imagine her leaning over in a chair and whispering some secret disaster into your ear, a pleasant little storm of words and breath. She clothes her vocals in this song with pounding, jaunty piano notes, tinselly chimes, wayward coos, and strong, four-cornered guitars, but you can still hear the sweetness on her voice, the hint of her too-old sadness that's turned (eventually) into nostalgia.
'Carouselle' is a little lament about small-town life, in particular the struggle between maintaining the old, historic and quaint versus the need for continuous growth and expansion and renovation. At one point, Nicole sings, "here comes the wrecking ball/so my town can live", which pretty well expresses the weird cycle of semi-annual demolition/construction that hangs on towns metastasized by sprawl, etc. (a strange coincidence: my own hometown is building an antique carousel in an effort to increase tourism, interest, business, whatever, which makes me think that maybe they're going about it the wrong way). Also, this song has one of the better false endings I've heard this year (not quite as surprising as LCD Soundsystem's 'New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down', but still pretty good).
'Carouselle' is from the "Bleeding Diamonds" EP, which you can buy here. There's an LP on the way too, "Neptune City", which is coming out in the early part of summer (6/26).
Posted by Kevin at March 5, 2007 07:18 PM