Classically trained vocalist, composer, and lyrical poet Lacy Rose is an artist that’ll keep you on the edge of your seat. She made her debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival in the Schubertiade Remix at Lincoln Center which included members from the International Contemporary Ensemble. Not to mention different venues such as the National Stardust, HERE Arts Center, the TANK and playing with a variety of artists such as Cocorosie, Baby Dee, Dave Malloy, and Carol Lipnik.
When you listen to Lispector, a 13-song musical meditation based on the works of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, you feel as if you’re imagining this one-woman play that is sung beginning to end as Lacy visions herself bringing the meditated guidance in a small art house theater with unbelievable results. There are moments where Lacy visions the works between John Cale’s Paris 1919, Jack Bruce’s Harmony Row, John Howard’s Kid in a Big World, and Nico’s Chelsea Girls that comes into the fold.
There’s something sad, tragic, lonely, and wonderful in Rose’s vocal arrangements. You feel the pain, the love, and the string sections that would take her up into the floating worlds of the heavenly clouds which speak of Jean Cocteau’s 1946 classic, Beauty and the Beast. With its Chamber and sombering arrangements, she gives a true foundation of a movie setting in its gorgeous 3-strip technicolor between the end of the 1930s and straight into the golden age of Hollywood.
The cover bears some striking resemblance of a 1940s poster as if she visions herself what the future will take her to. I wouldn’t compare her to the late, great Judy Garland, because that would be too much of a cop-out. Once she hits those high notes, you can feel her pain behind centrepieces such as ‘Lalande’, ‘Dry Sketch of a Horse’, the Ron Geesin-like orientations between ‘Carlota of Omphalos’ and the tragic loss of a loved one behind the operatic forms with ‘O to Love Him’.
Rose moves into a harmonium as she reflects the page turning moment, the loss of a key, the fogs, and wonders with its sun-rising moment to reach that golden moment to see the bright days ahead with its nod to Ivor Cutler and Robert Wyatt’s lyrical halo for ‘Saint Crispian and Short Time’ before dancing in this mystical forest that speaks of childhood’s loss and time forgotten for the sombering waltz for ‘The Sphinx and I’.
She often reminded me of Marjana Semkina from Iamthemorning as she sings alone at the top of foothills where the lighthouse is calling for her to come back and start another journey that’s waiting for her. Like a mini-opera inside your head, Lispector is a traveling journey that’s about to set sail for you and endure the wonder and mystery of Lacy Rose’s musical voyage that’ll knock your socks off.
