It’s a pure coincidence (no, it’s god’s will -IL) but the same evening Iman gets to see Sufjan Stevens, I decide to check out Nedelle Torrisi who was giving a free in-store at Origami Vinyl,… and at home, checking out her background, I discover that she worked and toured with Stevens when she fronted the band Cryptacize in 2009. They even know each other quite well, and Sufjan interviewed the pretty girl for the Asthmatic Kitty blog.
Nedelle Torrisi has also toured with Of Montreal, has released many solo records, and has performed background vocals on ‘Before Today’ by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. As a matter of fact, her last album, ‘Advice From Paradise’ was produced by Haunted Graffiti guy Kenny Gilmore, who also played the majority of the instruments, but ‘Advice From Paradise’ is also the title of her love column/blog, so you can see that the girl has more than one string to her bow… talking about strings, she is a classically-trained violinist, born from an ex-nun pianist and an ex-priest jazz drummer,… how could she be boring?
Vocals are front row in her music, and her very pretty and piercing voice was harmonizing very high with another girl’s backup vocals, over romantic pop songs,… sure, what else? This is a love column after all! The songs were very poppy and upbeat, but also tainted of a jazz-soul feeling, either gentle, tender and distilling a sort of melancholia, or bouncy, joyful and making the two women jump.
She was announcing the titles of some of her songs, ‘True love turns me on’, which had a bit of a Belle & Sebastian vibe, or the soulful and spacey, almost Sade-esque ‘Can’t Wait’, which is featured on her new album. There was something a bit retro-60’s and croon-y but at the same time she was bringing a lot of spontaneity and youthful energy. ‘I Hate That I Love You’ was cute and a bit like a bolder Zooey Deschanel singing a jazzy version of Best Coast…I don’t know if all these comparisons are fair, she has her own soft-pop style and her voice has a timeless quality attached to it.
She took her violin for a song, bringing more end-of-the-summer melancholia, and I could almost hear the Ariel Pink connection, then said she could rename the next song, from ‘King of Pain’(the title of a song by the Police) to ‘Scorpio’ (which is also the title of a song by Grandmaster Flash) but the light-as-a feather tune didn’t sound like any of these two groups but rather like a soundtrack for an European movie. While her last song even had a Motown-Supremes girl-group desire, Medelle Torrisi sounded like a delightful summery surprise, singing her heart out all set-long.
