Sydney Wayser

About the Artist

New York-based singer-songwriter Sydney Wayser is back with her sophomore album The Colorful (2009), a more lighthearted follow-up to 2007’s The Silent Parade. Where The Silent Parade leaned towards the dark and melancholic, The Colorful presents a collection of songs decorated with the playfulness of toy instruments while maintaining Wayser’s sense of intimate and serene elegance. Praised by NPR for her “natural gift for melody and musicianship,” The Colorful demonstrates a newfound maturity that showcases this gift clearly and delicately. Half-French and half-American, Wayser grew up in LA but spent a few months every year in Paris. The Louvre and the Orangerie being only a few blocks from her apartment, she quickly gleaned much of French culture from her songwriter father, leading her to musical influences that include Edith Piaf, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Jacques Brel, among many others. This European sensibility is evident on both The Silent Parade and The Colorful, each filled with tunes that could easily provide a soundtrack to a Godard film or a playful scene from Jeunet's Amélie. “I wrote mostly everything on piano and children's toys,” explains Wayser, while she was living in a tiny NY studio apartment and using a closet as an ersatz ‘music room’. She then went into the studio with Blaze McKenzie (producer) and Mike DiSanto (engineer) and “threw around a ton of ideas while we were locked in there," Wayser says. Their collaboration led to stand-out tracks such as “La Di Da,” a song written with Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in mind. The last track on The Colorful, “Pomegranate,” draws from Wayser’s fascination with the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades. Wayser explains that she wrote this song in two parts: “The first part is from Hades’ point of view while Persephone is in the underworld, and then she transitions through the earth up towards the light as bells and tinker toys come in as well as ice cream trucks and children's laughter…” Indeed, The Colorful, as a whole, feels like a sonic representation of this transition through the earth up towards the light. With an unwavering sense of charm and wit, melody and phrasing, Wayser’s latest offering is an irresistible invitation to follow her into the light; an invitation not to be denied.