"Ariella Daly comes from a world a lot like our own. The subtle differences shine out luminously upon listening to Waterkeeper, her velvety debut album. From the very first note, it is a brilliantly woven together cryptography of images. Daly is a masterful conjurer, an accomplished time-traveller, and a storyteller of the old tradition, all rolled into one. She hands us a red thread from her heart and pulls us through a beautifully adorned labyrinth, unsure what kind of a dream it is tha...
"Ariella Daly comes from a world a lot like our own. The subtle differences shine out luminously upon listening to Waterkeeper, her velvety debut album. From the very first note, it is a brilliantly woven together cryptography of images. Daly is a masterful conjurer, an accomplished time-traveller, and a storyteller of the old tradition, all rolled into one. She hands us a red thread from her heart and pulls us through a beautifully adorned labyrinth, unsure what kind of a dream it is that we have entered.
Waterkeeper floats upon the clear ringing of Daly's vocals and the sometimes head-spinning fervor of her piano work. The minimal arrangement works well, occasionally married to the wistful wails of fiddle and cello on songs such as "The Hinterlands" or the thoughtful intensity of the trombone on "Crafter". Daly comes from a folk tradition with its roots in earthy places. Inside these songs one can feel the changing of the seasons, the running of rivers, the hard beat of the sun, the burn of snow, the solidity of the forest, and always the movement of a journey whose destination is uncertain, yet assured. These songs make their home in the land.
Daly's true artistry lies in her ability to move deftly from soft, somber, melancholic balladeering to sweeping cinematic fullness in the space of a moment. Just as potent is her ability to hit the brakes and stop on a dime, using moments of silence as punctuation to draw out spaces of emotional intensity, before jumping back off the cliff into the terrifying bliss of musical free-fall. Waterkeeper breathes in all the right places.
The more subdued tracks on the album, like "Dark Little Bird" and "Like The Sea" are graceful hieroglyphics of simple beauty, in the mood of dancing light, gentle-moving wind chimes, or the first autumn rains. But at the height of her power, in songs like "Fire Find Your Way" and "Apple Tree", Daly draws one into the emotional space of the lone passenger of a driverless carriage, drawn by horses gone mad, careening over the narrow roads of the vertiginous heights of a snow-covered mountain pass, through suicide turns at breakneck speed, only to emerge pounding-chested and breathless, somehow miraculously unscathed."
Paul Edwin Throb, 2010,
Studio City, CA.
show more...
