Seattle – despite the vision provided by many songwriters – is not a terribly depressing place, sure, it does rain a lot but remove a lot of us from our rainy, gray city and we quickly miss it.. or never look back. Either way, the amount of ‘dark’ music that pour out of Seattle, the music off labels and on labels is the cause of many annoyances when I look for new and local music, I tend to favor electronic music and hip-hop personally, I tend to dislike the kind of music where it’s just boy/girl with a guitar/piano/whateverthefucktheyplay. It takes real talent to make stripped down music, music that focuses on words, even then I often find it at best somewhat boring and at worst somewhat laughable. So Tiny Vipers, an artist I’ve ignored despite her popularity has a new album out, “Life on Earth”, it’s real sit down and consider what the artist is saying music, sparse music that relies heavily on the dichotomy created by the silence and sound present in music. On this end it’s effective craftsmanship, the kind of thing that requires quite a bit of talent to pull off. However..
Points:
Words, music like this is focused entirely on the emphasis on words before music, and how the music wraps itself around those words and emphasizes the emotion the singer wishes to convey. This, in theory is wonderful, however, the reality of a majority of singer/songwriter rarely ever manipulates the relationship of words/music effectively.. Tiny Vipers does utilize the words/music relationship fairly well, she has an eye for space and where to place things. Everything feels appropriately placed, but not placed in a way that takes any risks.
The Fundamental problem with her music is how faceless her themes, her words are, she doesn’t stand out when you actually listen to what she’s saying. What distinguishes her from any other singer/songwriter save her understanding of tone and space? Not much, but to many fas of the singer/songwriter niche.. that may be just enough. Ultimately the album survives on a thin diet of substance, it’s mostly boilerplate material for a lyricist of her niche. She does go out of her way occasionally, most notably on the song ‘Young God’ and the track that follows it the title track ‘Life on Earth’, but it’s not enough.
Although I admit a strong bent against the whole genre to begin with, I feel it’s fair to call this album something of a bore, it barely makes an impression, rarely deviates tonally. Twin Viper has a nice voice, a distinct voice even.. but what she sings about and how she sings about it isn’t really worth listening to. But I must say this: If you like the genre, if you don’t mind the lack of originality, ignore me and get the album. It’ll probably keep your attention for a few spins.. probably fade after that. And I suppose that’s just fine. I can’t see myself ever re-visiting this personally.
