Customer Reviews

Queen of the Meadow

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the coolest band! Love the lyrics. Like dark, sexy jazz, almost. Jennifer Charles has the sexiest voice EVER. Yes, there are a few songs I tend to skip, but the rest make up for it. "Black Acres" and "Barely Recognize You" are the best, along with "Cities Will Fall", an apocalyptic love song. Gorgeous! The lyrics are dark, even graphic; images of convulsing moons, collapsing cities, and consuming burial grounds will leave "a trail like Dillinger" in your head. I can't wait to hear Bleed Your Cedar.

I haven't fallen in love with a band like this since I discovered Mogwai! The moment I heard Queen of the Meadow I went out and bought it -- and then I bought La Mer Enfortunata, which isn't an EF album but was made by the band's two main contributors, Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow -- and then I went out and tracked down Bleed Your Cedar. Wow! I rarely even write reviews, I'm just writing this because I love it so much. Really!

This music is very svelte -- kind of jazz meets alternative meets symbolist poetry meets pre-Raphaelite painting. Baudelaire would have loved this. Jennifer Charles has the sexiest, smoothest, velvetiest voice I ever heard. The music is intelligent, eclectic, at times bordering on genius. There's nothing like it.

Some people seem to prefer Bleed Your Cedar, but I think Queen of the Meadow is the better album. Cedar still shows derivative traces of pop and rock, IMHO. Queen is more understated musically, but I think it's a more complete or evolved statement of the band's aesthetic. There are one or two clunkers on the album -- like Fright Night -- but those are easy to forget alongside Black Acres (definitely the best track on the album), Dream Within a Dream (the Poe poem set to luscious jazz lounge music), and Cities Will Fall.

The best way I can describe my feelings about this album is like this: most music I listen to while doing other things -- working, eating, driving, etc. This album I love so much that I don't profane it by giving it half my attention. I only listen to it at night, alone, when I can give my whole attention to it. It's that good -- that pleasureful -- that great.

elysian fields rocks! etherial grooves with intelligent lyrics...the band takes the best from the NYC avant-garde rock and jazz scenes to create an original, sensuous sound. This album is clearly their best yet!

Syrup is delicious, but only in small doses--though beautiful and mystical, Queen of the Meadow may be hard to listen out repeatedly. Nonetheless, I love how Jennifer Charles's voice can move from a scratchy murmer to a clear, livened soprano within a single note. Most of the songs flow like a sea of thick chocolate, while others take on an ubeat, jazzy feel comparable to 70's slowrock. At times it even carries a folkish feel, as in "Rope of the Weeds."

By far, the strength of Elysian Fields is in the vocals. Jennifer's voice is hypnotic and carries the feeling that the name "Elysian Fields" suggests: a dreamy isolation of slumber and hedonism. One downfall of the album is that the simplistic guitar strums and even more simplistic percussion at times isn't enough. Many songs could use additional layers.

Peaks of the album are "Black Acres," where the original lyrics float with a haunting cello and organ accompaniment; the swingy "Bend Your Mind," which received much radio play in Europe but probably never the US; and "Dream Within a Dream," which holds a Wizard of Oz-like dream versus reality magic. Oren Bloedow takes the vocals in "Queen of the Meadow," which is a nice male diversion but perhaps comes too late.

This is a wonderful album, far more melodic than their first. One song even uses major chords, which is a first for this generally slow, lilting, sensual band. While I'll always be in love with the first, this one is moving in there quickly. Great lyrical rhythms and such....

There is one terribly sore spot on the album, though: Fright Night. The lyrics would seem as if they were written by someone's 8 year old niece. Aside from this, which I suggest skipping before you even hear it, so as not to lower your opinion of this wonderful band, the whole thing is very powerful and emotive. (Every band has at least ONE unbearable song, no matter how excellent they are. Have some fun... make a list.)

Rather than repeat the praises of the other reviews, I wish to focus on one point the others have ignored...."Rope of Weeds". This one song is worth the price of the CD.
To begin, it has a very slow blues background(almost inaudible)...just guitar and bass at the start, weaving a sence of a slowly rocking boat. Jennifer's vocals seductivly begin telling a tale that is as salty as any good sea-fairing ghost story ever written. We soon find that the salt is a tripple entandra, representing the saltiness of a sailor, as well as the salt the boat is hauling and finally the salty tears of sadness which envelops the whole story(from the very situation inwhich she finds herself, to the depravity of her actions, not to mention the tears of joy she ultimatly achieves by having her love with her forever).
Once the storyteller's situation has been told, and her grusome find reveled, the music begins to intensify and a drum is added into the background. The drum is used sparingly, just enough to puctuate the the naritive, and give a sence of the storytellers ever accelerating heartbeat, due to her uncontrolable desire to commit indelicate actions upon her erie find.
By this time the instrumentation has insinuated itself to a point that one knows without a doubt that this is indeed a blues tune. From here on, the song has the perfect ballance of vocal and instrumentation, while remaining true to it's minimalistic intentions. The third act is a resolution for the storyteller, and what a resolution she decides upon!
Here we have an unsettling premis, an unsavory course of action and a satisfying resolve all told with instrumentation that grows in intencity that perfectly punctuates each emotional discovery of the lyric.
There is sadness here, but also love(perhaps lust, but being a romantic, I prefer to believe it is a love at frist sight), a love so strong that it hurts after you die. A love worth dying for. Yes this is a story of loss, but also redemption, in the fulfillment of a dark desire that is unimagined by most of us(and also by the storyteller herself, until she is faced with the situation). This is a ghost story with ghastly implications, and a quietly satisfying resolve.
Over all, I would say this song was executed with perfection. All of the elements of an enduring ballad are here, along with a prime example on how to use crescendo to compliment a vocal driven composition to realize the fullest effect of the lyrical imagry via minimalist instrumantation.
All that I need to say is BUY THIS DISK...NOW!!! All the other reviews are fairly accurate so I have no need to comment on the rest of the CD, that has already been done by everyone else quite well enough.

Although I enjoyed "Bleed Your Ceder" a bit more (a five star album for sure), Queen of the Meadow is a great album. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves women singers with sultry voices and a good band that goes along with it. They have slowly become one of my favorite bands.

Bravo to this very hip Downtown NYC band! Beautiful blending of words and music. Jennifer Charles' haunting voice stays with you. Band matches their own lyrics with one prize adddition....a poem by Edgar Alan Poe...and it works! Album dedicated to Jeff Buckley (in memorium)...a couple of the songs somehow seem to eerily recall Buckley's untimely death by drowning..(or am I imagining this??)

Sui generis. This music, that voice...it's stronger than you are, just surrender. A thousand years, a bottomless heart. Listen over and over.

Hard to find this band on the west coast. Bleed Your Cedar is a great album with some tracks that ebb and flow all around you. The singer's voice and clever lyrics work well with the mix of the tempos and mood of the music. With Queen of the Meadow, there are some great tracks in here, but the singer is taken to the front of the mix and it sounds somewhat off balance too me.