When Ana Gracey has the misfortune (sorry, mixed fortune) to make the annals of a musical fame beyond fads, remember that you probably read it here first. Here's one "voice of a woman" giving me a hard time to find words for what it is that she does, particularly on the strength of gifts displayed in semi-"demo" shape.
Listening to 'The Unplugged Album', fleeting analogies in mind have been the vocal range and surprises a Kate Bush musters, the maturing I hear in Madonna's music before and after Alan Parker's multi-layered 'Evita' (1996; IMDb) and the voice training that went into that screen role, the great Ella F. being scatty, and the sweet-sour sadness of some of the Brit-folk renewal bands of the 1970s and early '80s.
All such passing comparisons, however, simply reflect facets of a young singer who has come into her own; the sense of listening to a lass maturing may also simply lie in the order in which I -- not Ana -- chose to compile the mp3s downloaded from her website (left to right and top to bottom for the 12 'Unplugged' tracks, followed by 'Rain You Down' (or 'You Rain Down'?) and 'Dream' (again) off the released 'Innocence' album.
I've no idea who Ana's other musicians are, apart from Billy Thompson, a fantastic fiddler (violin virtuoso -- take your pick, pop, jazz or the "classical" touch), but her lyrics are all of love, happy love, sad love, frustrated love, sexual love, hate-love... First time round, I thought some banal; second time round I enjoyed them as simple truths sung with uncommon honesty, and third time round, the way this girl uses mere words as a trampoline for her stunning vocal acrobatics, leaps and pauses was still taking my breath away.
There are tabla in the percussion and quarter-tones in Ana's vocal chords and lungs; she went to RADA and came out with one of those rare voices that can become a played instrument -- like strings or woodwind -- at the service of pure, interwoven sound, where words are left behind. I mean something akin to what Sheila Chandra can do in a different musical domain.
If there's anything I don't like about Ana's considerable style, it was an occasionally Americanised or mid-Atlantic edge which struck my just maybe unjust ears as not quite the real her -- more of a gimmick than a part of the gift most enjoyable when she is singing free. Listening again, this ceased to bother me. But it used to drive me insane when the early '90s for some reason brought a handful of British buskers to Paris's summertime Métro and they tried to sing Dylan songs like Dylan when they couldn't. When one or two of them ventured into more original stuff, this was revealed for what it was: a disservice both to their voices and to Bob Dylan.
The "semi-'demo'" term I used at the outset comes only from hearing 'Dream' (Unplugged) and then 'Dream' (Innocence) -- same song, different simplicities and subtleties -- pending purchase of an album which I hope will take her far ... and maybe bring her and the band to Paris, since I'd love to see and hear her both live and fully stripped on stage. Stripped of time. All but a couple of the songs offered on her site are "single" package length, between three and four ½ minutes long. This format might suit the music industry and radio stations, but what Ana packs into it is at times a revelation!
 Her music is quite different from almost anything I know by either of her illustrious parents (who led me to her in the first place, as I wrote on Saturday), but Ana and her musicians have the originality, talent, energy, control and, already, a mastery of timing, that incite to taking risks. With a voice like Ana's and a jazz inheritance of improvised interplay between human and instrumental sound already manifest on some of these tracks, I'd give a lot to hear what this particular band can dare when it comes to a combination of jamming and pure "vocalise".
So please grace us, Gracey, with some more airy Ana. You've already got the wings. Fly high!
This entry having gestated for three days and born in the wake of a couple of quick chats today with an Arian -- Milady, too, sung the blues, now banished, I hope, by an azure sky -- tonight's choice of flower for Lady E. is suddenly quite obvious. Courtesy of some Californians, I lay at two pairs of feet, but with one special heart in mind, the bedded delphinium, nicely placed at Sheridan Gardens among "the church steeples in the village of perennials".
For its "meaning", you see, is a matter of the airs.
9:39:36 PM link 
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