Tangled Up In Blue

posted in: Artist Features

Imagine Fiona Apple and Janis Joplin joined by Neko Case and Radiohead for a Saturday night out, reads the splash page of the blueVenus Web site. And although that suggests a supergroup fronted by three alpha women, blueVenus is in reality just one woman”singer-songwriter Andrea de Boer. That’s not to say the music isn’t larger than the sum of its parts. De Boer weaves a lot of ideas into each song, changing up time signatures and vocal parts like an actor trying on new characters. Killing Time introduces you to the warm brush of de Boer’s voice as she drifts through hypnotic, moody soundscapes. Grin, on the other hand, uses the wiry scrape of plucked strings and bleating horns to create a jazzy, Latin-infused number. Things may sound upbeat, but there’s distress lurking at the fringes. In Happy Tune”a creeper of a melody”de Boer tries to outrun her demons, telling herself Instead of dark I’ll be light. We hope she hangs on to a little of the darkness. Keeps things interesting.

“blueVenus” – Killing Time