Wind Chains by Molly Zenobia

From the bass-piano depths of 'Whirlpool' we are launched into the keyboard caverns of 'Mermaid' where many mournful voices reflect themselves from wall to wall, never giving a direction, but beautifully rendering these pictures of either self-enforced solace or a dreamy interpretation of the languid life of bubbly creatures of the deep.

That's only one brief glimpse into the dramatic personae that is Zenobia... Sometimes she is ghosting herself with only multi-floating vocals and scale-running piano, as in the pontific 'Porcelain'... Freaky, spooky or your dead girlfriend come back to life, Molly is all things to all saints in the netherworld.

From the glorious to the usual, it's rather hard to guess where we are next taken on our thematic visit thru the dark castle. We might be invited to partake of some 'Paper Clip', emerging its rolling acoustic piano and the ever-increasing walk of someone's bass tub thumping tourism thru candle-flickering halls. We could be induced into the backwards guitar-walk intro of the breath-starting 'Lullabee', a haunting melody that takes me back to Psycho II and all things exquisite while at the same time scary.

Whatever mood Molly enraptures us with, she wants you to remember that it is the Voice that makes the peace. I've not heard gothic (should you want to call it that) this pristine since Desar and the days of Savatage sparks. On certain tracks, like 'King Aeolus', Molly's voice is so soft you think it just might break, but then she brings in the whole band and gets uncharacteristically angry for a second. However, she is her own character. Like a brilliant foreign film, you can't 2nd guess her, you can only follow. She may not Wish you to follow, and so will promptly disappear for a moment of song. But she will return. In sweet full force."

-Musesmuse - 2001

"She's invented her own pianist-songstress niche-soulful, yet with an air of manic surreality."

-Kyle Gann, Village Voice critic.

*Molly Zenobia has been compared to Dido, Portis Head, Sarah Mclachlan, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Paula Cole. Her genre is alternative. Her vocalizations have been called gorgeous and intoxicating; her musicianship, masterful; her writing and arranging, ground-breaking.*

Molly Zenobia

Wind Chains

Reviewed By: Anthony Flores aka BlackOrpheus

Can I just say I've made a most serendipitous discovery. I was just sitting here clearing my plate of waiting reviews, when I pick up this cd "Wind Chains" by Molly Zenobia. Intriguing album cover of a fair, dark haired girl staring back at me through a filter of blue. It almost looks post-mortem...She certainly "looks" goth.

Intrigued, I slide the disc into my player. A brief flourish of an electro intro, before the piano and yes, the voice is introduced. This is an old voice, a lived in voice. She could very well be channelinglong dead songstresses of the golden age of Jazz and Blues. She possesses an old worldliness, and a new world edginess that makes for an irresistable combination. Her piano is a living, breathing extension of her already more than adequate means of expression. It breathes, swells, moans, and weeps.

I'm tempted to compare her to artists I already know and love, as a means of reference. However, Molly Zenobia deserves more than comparisons. She is doubtless influenced, and yet still an original that will only grow more so with time. She may not be "goth" by popular definition. But, I've always held to the idea that goth is a view of the world and feelings that spring from that unique view, that differentiate one from the masses living at life's surface.. And so, I embrace this dark hued music as the familiar messanger of my own heart. Below are just a few favorites off an album by no means spare in exquisite offerings.

FROZEN - Is the opening track on this disc, and it writhes in the exposure of a wound, still raw. Drawn to and repelled by one another, how can love prevail against the defenses and inconsistency of emotional unavailibility? If it's going to happen, it's got to happen soon. "Frozen"

is a particularly effective lament and plea in one.

PORCUPINE - is a smokey, lilting inventory of a love life, perhaps. I read porcupine, as an aka for prick. The possibilities aren't inspiring, but she is conscious of the fact that her own investment in these "pricks" isn't that serious. She doesn't know any more about her own expectations, than they do about fulfilling them..."I'm walking, I'm talking, I can't see where I'm going." This is a frequent replay, great song!

FADE - Zenobia's voice opens this chiller up, and then her piano chimes in, in assent. It is another moving lullaby of loss and regret. She struggles with the recurrent theme of two lives passing and never meeting, strangers in the night. It is short, but it says what I've found her to say all to articulately.

As I close out this sojourn with Molly Zenobia, I'd like to encourage any lover of piano, vocals, and great song writing to delve into this deep, still, and still disturbing well. This is thoughtful, meditative

music, cloth cut from the coat of all our experience.

2/2/03

Molly's compositions are dramatic, big, often crossing over into a theatrical range both musically and lyrically. Her training in piano was classical. That and her love of literature, history and poetry is a great blend for rock and jazz cross-over pieces she creates.

What she writes is melodic, yet experimental.

She doesn't fit into formula art.

WIND CHAINS is Molly's second album. SKIN, Molly's first album, was released December 1999. SKIN is an acoustic experience, a debut sampling. Wind Chains is a story-journey. It's also a larger scale production - full band, acoustic and electronic mix. Molly is working on her third and forth albums simultaneously while ALSO scoring a feature film, Last Grave. 2003 is a busy, busy year.

Look for album number 3 in December.

Molly has epiphanies - songs are frequently 'born' in minutes. She is prolific and driven.

"I use my feelings and images created by different planes crossing or blending, and I interpret these into what you hear. I am a translator. I try to paint you the pictures with sounds. I don't hear things. I see things and I feel things - there are feelings and movements, like with Whirlpool, I saw the entire sound. I felt the song and I could move to it. I knew all the movements. I knew the motion of the song and all that was left was the auditory part. I could see it and feel it and move with it - and then all the music is spilled out of that. I am merely the water can that spills it out for you."

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