Published on Jul 23, 2004
I always get a little nervous when a CD arrives in the mail
marked ‘File under: Contemporary Folk/New Age.’ It generally means
that the promotions person for the label had no bloody clue what
exactly it was, so threw it into a nice big genre and hoped somehow
it would stick. Actual new age folk music is nice, sometimes even
interesting, but usually another genre in disguise. However, this
time I was wrong, and I admit it. Shantala — otherwise known as
New Age instrumentalist Benjy Wertheimer and his wife Heather on
vocals — is indeed New Age, is indeed folk, and is indeed rather
lovely. Their latest CD
Church Of Sky has a lot going for it, and is definitely
worth a listen.
For starters, Heather can sing. I mean, really sing; she has a
lovely breathy and precise alto that wraps around words like a
lover’s embrace and sends them winging their way into your soul.
She can alternately be sultry and transcendent, playful and
intense, and is a delight to listen to. Though I haven’t heard a
lot of Benjy Wertheimer’s work, I have had some exposure to it, and
he’s a good instrumentalist and a great producer and engineer. That
production shines on
Church Of Sky; the Wertheimers working together create a
recording that’s stylish, delicate, and perfect, guitar strings and
breathy vocals incredibly clear.
There’s no getting around the fact, however, that this is
primarily a showcase for Heather’s songwriting skills, and they’re
pretty damn good. She has an astonishing capacity for turns of
phrase (the lyrics to “Dance Me” alone are some of the most poetic
— and erotic — I’ve heard in a very long time), and genuinely
seems to have fun with words. Some people are poets first and
musicians second; Heather Wertheimer seems to be one of them.
Other songs worth mention on
Church Of Sky include the sweet and haunting “Etched In
Stone,” the poignant images of “Madrone,” the triumphant title
track, and the heartbreaking “Going Twice,” which captures a lost
parent in three minutes better than some works of art that take
hours. Only on “There’s No Safe Place” do the lyrics cross over
from thought-provoking to perhaps a bit overly earnest; maybe
that’s me, as any song about the Holocaust for me suffers from
comparison to Fred Small’s “Denmark 1943.”
Genres aside (and frankly, by the time I was done listening to
this I decided it was particularly liberal newgrass and left it at
that),
Church Of Sky is a wonderful, wonderful piece of music and
definitely worth a visit.