Paperclips & Sand [Import]

Jo Mango | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 13, 2006)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Lo-Five UK
• ASIN: B000EFTEJ4
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #441,934 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A breathtaking and magical CD to enjoy over and over again, May 12, 2007

By 

shortandsweet (California, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Paperclips & Sand (Audio CD)

I first heard Jo Mango on a live broadcast on KCRW, which can still find on their website. Jo Mango has a mystical and magic voice that takes you worlds away from the troubles of your everyday. Her unique style is brought to the music and all and all - I find it her music a soul soothing experience. I find myself pulled in to the feelings she's expressing. Her lyrics are beautiful and her voice...just wow. It leaves you speechless. I cannot wait until Jo Mango comes back to the west coast so I can hear her perform live.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magical and Sweet, March 29, 2006

By 

S. M. Kim (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paperclips & Sand (Audio CD)

Magical and sweet is how I would describe the first track ("My Lung") and Jo Mango's voice on "Paperclips and Sand." With bare instrumentation and the captivating vulnerability of a story that's truthfully told, Jo Mango's first album is both idealistic and delicately winsome.

I first heard "Gamer" on the radio and kept mistaking it for Damien Rice. It shares the same sort of raw emotion combined with the artful theatricality of Rice's songs on O. This duet, sung upon the graceful backdrop of strings (guitar, cello, violin), tells the story of an alienation caused by broken trust within the context of a love triangle. I felt that the drama of the piece, highlighted by the lament of the violin, was also nicely mirrored in the subtle use of piano. The piano's lilting notes seem to keep a falling motif, reflective of the relational collapse revealed in the lyrics.

This sort of artistic symmetry is one of the things I appreciated most in the album. In "Waltz With Me," Jo sings the "one-two-three" rhythm at the end of the song, as if pointing to the pre-scripted, yet still enjoyable and worthwhile nature of the dance as what we ultimately long for in love. In another song, the bonus track "Portuguese Skies," Jo, unexpectedly employs her voice to coo, dove-like, while telling of birds "singing in my favourite tree."

My favorite aesthetic mirroring, however, is in "My Lung," featuring only Jo's voice and the kalimba, an instrument which, in that track, sounds just like a music box or Jack-in-the-Box wound to a perfect rhythm. And like a Jack-in-the-Box, there is a magic and innocent discovery to the unfolding of the song. The lyrics celebrate the pledges and possibilities in love in a completely unaffected way; it seems to believe in the promise of love the way a child wonders at and anticipates the final surprise of the Jack-in-the-Box.

Having heard Jo Mango's EP "the antidote" prior to the release of this album, I also waited in hopeful anticipation of "Paperclips and Sand" and was enchanted when it finally arrived.