I knew nothing about Cheri Dahl when Iman asked me to write about her… never met her, never saw her perform, never heard one of her songs… so I rushed to YouTube and listened to her. With her acoustic guitar, she plays a mean rock’ n’ roll or soft and sad devastating ballads, but her real instrument is her voice, deep and elastic, it seems she can go low and high with the same confidence. Blonde or brunette, she incarnates the tough NYC girl raised in the streets, what do I say, I know nothing about her!
In her review of ‘High Heels’ – an unusually soft song for this dressed-in-leather-and-lace girl – Helen compared her to Chrissie Hynde, and I totally hear it in her vocals, but as Helen added ‘Cheri will kick your ass, Chrissie will flip you off and walk away’, and that’s why I would say she has a little bit of Courtney Love too? I know it’s a dangerous comparison, but this is what Cheri inspires me in this video of ‘RNR Baby Jane’, a song with a Brian Jonestown Massacre vibe… She looks fearless, and I can’t help it, I smell danger when I watch this!
Her performance of ‘Hollywood Meltdown’ in 2012, just confirms that, but if she is a little bit of Courtney Love, it’s certainly without the meltdowns precisely! She sings the song with such a big voice, an enormous one should I say, turning raw, bluesy, raspy, operatic, showing an usual range, ferociously and passionately howling… yeah, the voice is definitively the star here, she sounds like several singers in one, she authentically gives all she has and we would be stupid not to pay attention. ‘Sometimes I feel so crazy, it gives me the creeps’, she starts the song with, so she is a tough girl with some insecurities too?
Cheri Dahl has been around for some time and has become a legend on the New York Lower East side. She discovered she had talent when she began entertaining her family and friends by the age of two. She composes, arranges and writes all her own material and her latest single “High Heels” will be released later this year.