The Paul Zollo Blog: On Rickie Lee Jones, The Budos Band, Jascha Hoffman, Gary Calamar, Terre Roche, and Sandy Ross

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Terre Roche
Imprint

Joy. This is about the joy of music, of songwriting, of singing and playing. She’s someone who writes songs and sings them with pure heart and poignant soul. She also makes fun records to listen to, and always has.

It’s always a revelation to hear the solo work of someone we know and love from a group. Even among her sisters, though, it was always clear that Terre – though she didn’t write as many songs as Maggie at first – had something special going on, even in this trio of special people. The Roches always had a way of penetrating the veneer of recording to connect intimately and directly with their audience; partially due to their vocal style, which is the very opposite of the dramatic filigreed style so prevalent among singers today.

But in her songs – in genius passages like “Christlike” – we knew Terre was unique. And when she showed up doing primal screams more primal than even John and Yoko on Robert Fripp’s landmark Exposure album – we knew, man, this Terre, she is something.

That something is evident on this beautiful and elegiac chain of songs on Imprint. The title song details those things that make a physical imprint in the world, and an imprint on our souls – those things beyond words. Many of these songs use language and music to take us to that place – that place beyond words. Others, like the remarkable “Waning Cats and Dogs,” set to the haunting bell-tone reverberations of singing bowls (their tones sustained as if on the wind) and beautiful overlapping voices along with a beautifully punctuated bassline, bring us a Buddhist message of Zen acceptance. It’s an acceptance of that which changes, and ultimately wanes: “All happiness is waning/All sadness is waning…”

“Stick Up Hair” is a funny reflection on modern times, craftily using modern language idioms that ultimately bend our perceptions, and ties that into politicians who also glide by on with sketchy ethics. It’s also a great rhyming feat – each line is the same rhyme – a rhyme for ‘air’ – showing her love of songwriting craft traditions as she carries the form forward. Other songs show a happy playfulness with language, like in “Calabash Boom” and “No Sleep Full Moon” where she employs a language streetwise from the soul, a little bit Lewis Carroll with shades of Bob Marley and John Lennon.

Or the amazing “Baby Animal,” with its haunting refrain, “Baby animal walking on the ceiling/ Can’t you see me kneeling/Here on the ground.”

Sometimes her lines are abstract, and sometimes just the opposite. They cut to the core, stripping away artifice to get to the heart of things, as in “Earth Rock,” written to that person who shares your life and impacts it daily: “You are the holder of all the sadness/You are the witness of all the madness….the keeper of all the secrets.. you are the only one that’s tried and true…”

But few songs sadder or more beautiful have been written in years, in the great Tom Waits tradition of something so sad it is beautiful and happy, in “Maxwell,” written for a departed cat that not only had its own life, but represented a big chunk of the songwriter’s life, the sorrow is for this absent love, and for that lost part of your own life.  “Oh I miss you little boy and I miss me/That part that died the part that used to be…”

The instrumentation is simple and classic: Terre on vocals, guitars and Tibetan Damnyen, Himalayan Singing Bowls, and her producer, Jay Anderson on bass and percussion. She’s such an inventive and distinctive guitarist, and amazing harmony singer, that the sound is never wanting. These tracks are pure and focused but also rich and full of heart.

It all ends with “I Saw A Lady,” with lyrics by her father and music by Nick Perito. A soaring and lyrical ballad, it resounds like a lost Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. Dedicated to her mother, Jude Roche, and wrapped up with this song by her dad about her mom, this is an album of sweetly familial love by a singer usually surrounded by family even musically. Happy when she steps out solo, she does it surrounded in a cloak of real love.

It’s a sweet and nourishing musical journey to take with the great Terre, whose music is sad and joyful and full of humanity and heart. Hoping more music follows soon.

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