Customer Reviews

Ten Small Paces [Vinyl]

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

 

 

Ida is the best unheard of band around. The songs are inescapeable, the lyrics and melodies are catchy and impossible to forget. Standout songs include "Shoe In", "Fallen Arrow" and "Les Etoiles Secretes"...Buy this album if you are looking for something new and different...otherwise you'll be severely disappointed.

Like many of you, we have hundreds of CDs, but this is the VERY BEST Ida album and in the top 10 for all of our CDs. I've had it for several years and it remains touching, inspiring, beautiful and angry, and is actually capable of giving you the chills -- repeatedly. You must buy it and experience the lovely wash of sound that is Ida.

Ida is uncommonly lovely, very beautiful pop with a hushed sensibility--the strings remind me of my favorite other obscure indie pop band the black watch. Achingly heartfelt--sometimes too much so--songs and campfire production. His Name is Alive guy apparently produces them: that seems fitting. Buy this!

Ida is one of my hidden treasures that I share with good friends. They don't make it out to the West Coast very often but it really only took that first concert to fall in love. Since then they have produced 3 full albums, an EP "Losing True" and a shared album with the band Retsin "Ida Restin Family, Volume 1". Their music is dangerously soft, melodic with heartfelt lyrics. The album Ten Small Paces is a great introduction to their style. Previous albums "Tales of Brave Ida" and "I Know About You" established their guitar oriented sound and beautiful harmonies between founding members Dan Littleton (Guitar & Vocals) and Liz Mitchell (Guitar & Vocals). Michael Littleton (Drummer) joined the band on the second album. Paces builds upon that bedrock adding quirky instrumentation and the song writing/vocal talents of Karla Schickele (Bass) from the band Beekeeper. The audio is a little more raw this time but it sounds like you are sitting is someone's living room listening to friends make some beautiful music. Standout tracks are: Les Etoiles Secretes, Fallen Arrow, The Weight, Shoe In (a Secret Stars cover), and Golden Hours (a Brian Eno cover). Ten Small Paces is a great place to start sharing some love and I can't praise all their albums enough.

This is one of those albums that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy when you see it at the record store (IF you can find it). Warren Defevre of His Name Is Alive adds subtle production and that "livingroom" feel. Les Etoiles Secrets is one of my favorite songs ever. Dream Date always makes me sad. If you care about music, buy this!

Their first two albums are way better than this one, although I love this one as well. "Ten Small Paces" has a quirky mood to it that the others don't, but I would DEFINATELY check out the other two first.

Coming two years after the release of their stunning, seminal "I Know About You," Ida's third CD captures a more eclectic mood, including wonderful covers of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and Neil Young's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," ambient home recordings, avant-garde instrumentals (somewhat like Rachels' recent CD's) and a few shining originals like "The Weight" and "Les Etoiles Secretes." This CD also marks the full time presence of Karla from Babe the Blue Ox, who contributes two quirky but convincing songs of her own. With the closing of Simple Machines Ida has now moved to a major label, so expect to hear more about them in the near future; in the meantime, seek out their first three albums, as well as Dan's other work in Liquorice, Slack, Three Shades of Dirty, and the Hated, and Liz's previous work with Lisa Loeb.

This CD has moments of sheer beauty, the kinds of sounds that draw you back to it again and again. It also, unfortunately, tends to be _very_ slow and lumbering. It's a melancholy affair for the most part with little drumming and a lot of space. It can be quite pleasing but to me comes off as choppy and disjointed.

Diverse and emotional male/female duo deals primarily in the Low variety of slow, acoustic based sadness, albeit with a little more pep and accessibility. It is the straight laced pacing and production that neither adds to ones emotional involvement, nor drowns it out in a sea of pretension; surly a better possibility, but also a worse alternative. While running through a variety of moods and subtle changes in the instrumentation, many songs feel like a refreshing attempt to keep each track individual... although as subtly eclectic as the track listing can be, despite the earnest and sincere playing, the strumming still retains it's dulling pace; the majority of songs simply do not rise above their predictable mechanics.

i've owned this cd for some time now (probablly purchased it in later 98 or early 99). i hadn't listened to in in over two years and i decided to pop it in just to see if maybe i would be more into it now than i was a few years back. nope!

this cd is definately good, but it's not remarkable. it's basically something that i would listen to if someone put it on, but i would never put it on myself. ida are great musicians and this album definately highlights their abilities in different genres. to me this album is really only worth it for "shoe in" and "everyone knows this is nowhere". both are covers, by the secret stars and neil young respectively, but they have their own uniqueness to them.