reviews
DarkBlueWorld CD reviews:
Junkmedia - full review (album of the week)
The Globe and Mail - full review (CD of the week)
The Province - June 27, 2006
Proof that great things come from taking your time. Since 2002, singer Elizabeth Fischer, guitarist Ron Samworth and Tony Wilson, drummer Skye Brooks and bassist Pete Schmitt have developed a sound that is beautifully captured here. Akin to Diamanda Galas singing German cabaret music as played by King Crimson, or something like that, the music is thoroughly engaging. Over it all, Fisher's sinuous voice delivers her often dark and edgy lyrics about "love songs for the dead" and smiling angels inside picture frames. A
Concert Review
At Rime on Friday, June 10
- "Two guitars, bass, drums, and a charismatic singer who dangles from the mike stand as if it’s all that’s keeping her from drowning—why is this in the arts section?
Because it’s art. And because Elizabeth Fischer is an artist.
... Based on its jazz-heavy lineup, and on a demo she recorded over a year ago, I was expecting Dark Blue World to be more of an art-cabaret act, like an amplified Lotte Lenya, or Nick Cave with an Eastern European accent. After all, Tony Wilson and Ron Samworth are the guitarists: Wilson writes beautifully enigmatic chamber music for his eponymous quartet, while Samworth has recently been splitting the difference between improv jazz and contemporary classical music, both with Talking Pictures and on some larger ensemble projects. Drummer Skye Brooks has appeared with the Be Good Tanyas but is more often found playing with avant-jazz bands. Bassist Pete Schmitt might be the ringer: he sounds like a rock musician who’s listened to a lot of Jamaican dub. But he also plays—with Brooks, guitarist Dave Sikula, and trumpeter JP Carter—in the Inhabitants, a group with a decidedly improvisational bent.
The bands that Fischer led immediately before forming this new unit tended more toward the cabaret side of things, with an emphasis on the accordion. But there were no accordions audible on Friday night: just some heavy two-guitar action, a lot of rock-steady rhythms, and the leader’s well-weathered vocals and angst-dripping lyrics.
So where does the art come into it? Well, to begin with, there’s that singing. Like Bob Dylan, Fischer has learned to do a lot with a little: hers is not the most flexible instrument around, but it can range from a macabre growl to a keening shriek, both of which she uses to good effect. She’s also adept at unsettling an audience by singing ever so slightly flat, then leaping up an octave. If she were a bell she’d be cracked, but a cracked bell tolling is exactly the sound of imminent doom, and no one does doom like Fischer."
Georgia Straight, June 2005
- "Brecht didn't have any influence on my writing, 'cause I knew nothing about Brecht when I started," she explains... "Someone--I don't remember who--always said I should be singing that stuff, but I knew nothing about it. But when I did finally get presented with it, it turned out that I have a real natural affinity for it. And now, when I look at the stuff that I write, of course it has similarities, or it has a similar point of inspiration."
"We might share a certain disappointed humanism, I guess," she adds. "Although he obviously had more faith than I, since he did manage to be a Communist, which I cannot seem to manage to achieve. You cannot idealize the human situation, because human beings will disappoint you at every turn. However, kindness counts. Really, it's the only way to behave."
Those who know Fischer only casually might find that last statement strange. She can be a harsh critic of other artists' work and there is an obvious morbidity in much of her songwriting. "I write about what I see, which is none too pretty," she says. But the horror in her work comes out of her empathy for the unhappy and oppressed, and underneath her black humour and equally black bangs lies a surprisingly generous spirit. -
Alex Varty, Georgia Straight
- He solos rarely, but when he does solo it is forcibly... That makes him a musicians' musician, for he successfully plays all kinds of music, never making himself obtrusive in the process. As part of an interview, I made the comment, "You seem to consistently contribute to the musicality of the performance, yet somehow we in the audience don't hear enough of you. You seem to more feeding the music than projecting it."
Samworth's response to the idea was prolonged: "I love that, it is part of my concept.... My aesthetic is really geared towards group playing. Once you're in a group its important to think about the overall sound of what you're trying to get across.
"I don't think I'm a particularly egotistical player. I don't mind getting out there and taking a solo, but I really want to play for the music. I get off way more by having a satisfactory group experience than laying it down and playing a hot solo. Celebrating the role of the virtuoso, I think, is a 19th century convention, obsolete in some ways. I'm more interested in hearing virtuoso group playing. " -
Laurence Svirchev
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