I am listening to And She Closed Her Eyes.
Amazing! Unique! Original! Stina has a whispering little-girl voice that sounds a little clipped, mixed very loud in relation to the instruments. The effect is like a very intimate one-way conversation with a telepathic alien poet who is very, very far away. None of the songs really rock. They have a kind of lullaby quality. Some jazzy accents with trumpets and saxes.
SAMPLE!
This is a 23 second sample from the song Fireworks
(260k WAV format)
The lyrics are very mysterious...I think one song is about the singer recognizing a terrorist/bomber from the way he walks across a street. A lot of the songs have something familiar...I can say, "This is her Bel Canto song, this is her Bjork song, this is her Kate Bush song, this is her Astrud Gilberto (!) song, etc." However, her voice and singing style sets her very far apart from any of these artists. She has a Stina sound even more than Victoria Williams has a Victoria Williams sound, if you know what I mean.
SAMPLE!
This is a 20 second sample from the song Viewed From The Spire
(220k WAV format)
Stina sings all of her songs in English. Her accent sounds a little strange at first, but it grows on you. Her vocal style is so singular that the slightly foreign pronounciation doesn't sound out of place. Stina's music is very soothing for me, though. All her arrangements are very sophisticated although at first they sound very simple. Stina has also gathered very interesting musicians to play on the songs, like the Swedish guitar group Popsicle.
SAMPLE!
This is a 44 second sample from the song So This Is Goodbye
(164k compressed AIFF format)
Stina's early jazz influence becomes even more obvious when I put on her first CD, Memories of a Color. I notice something that I missed earlier. She reminds me very much of Akiko Yano, my favorite Japanese pop artist. Yano is married to Ryuichi Sakamoto, who is well known for being a founding member of the Yellow Magic Orchestra and for scoring films like The Last Emperor. However, Yano is much more original and talented compared to her husband, and just as prolific. Her audience is very limited because her English is not as good as Stina's, and even in Japan her best work is off the mainstream. If you're lucky enough to come across one of her CD's, give it a try.
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