Search - Amanda Thorpe :: Mass

From artful storytelling to the pulsing rhythms and languid beauty of trip-hop, the music of Amanda Thorpe is never easy to pigeonhole (though it tends to lodge snugly in the subconscious). While staying true to her strong sense of melody, Amanda?s smart, often intensely personal songs with roots in folk and jazz subtly challenge our expectations of familiar forms. Her influences are as diverse as haunted British pop-poet, Nick Drake, and the sultry Francois Hardy, to guitar-god and wordsmith Richard Thompson, the Velvet Underground and Blondie. Amanda?s EP, ?Too Many Spirits,? is a collection of deceptively simple folk-pop tunes that highlight her poetic and harmonic sensibility. Spirits? songs range in mood from romantic exuberance to jazzy melancholy. A unique voice in the crowded cosmos of downtown performers, Amanda?s entrancing new CD, ?Mass,? again displays her powerful and haunting vocals over a sonic landscape laced with trip-hop and dreamy textures. As was recently noted in Variety.com, Amanda's vocals "balance brassiness and vulnerability with panache." While the song ?Always? resembles an ultra-hip interpretation of a 1940s nightclub standard, the sing-along guitar pop of ?Splinters? and coffeehouse intimacy of ?Toy Guitar? reveal an artist who moves confidently between the traditional and the modern.