Search - Dana Kletter & Karen :: Dear Enemy

Outstanding

SlitFrenchy@aol.com | north carolina | 11/25/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Love this album. It was introduced to me through a friend of Dana and Karen, and I've actually met the sisters since then -- a charming duo that conspired to create an amazing piece of work. Though lacking the recognition they deserve (the sisters were turned down to perform on stage for Lilith Fair), their secret won't be kept for long. A smashing debut that pulls in any listener -- you don't have to have a twin to relate to this incredible music. A must have."

A harrowing, confessional masterpiece.

SlitFrenchy@aol.com | 08/31/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"More often than not, a guided tour of someone else's familyphoto album is an exercise in feigned interest on the part of thelistener. Hence the risks inherent to confessional songwriting. It is dangerous territory- requiring of the author both a rich, interesting personal history and, perhaps more importantly, a lucid perspective on its potential merits as art.That the Kletter twins have created an album that makes you want to ask questions, to know more about them, and to hope-against-history for their good fortune is a testament to both their intriguing pasts and devastating talents as songwriters.As previously noted, this album defies easy categorization, even moreso than Dana's earlier work with the chamber/folk/punk trio "blackgirls".Album highlights are many. "Father Song", Dana's melancholy chronicle-of-wasted-time, provides perhaps the album's most heartbreaking pictorial. In it, the daughter offers her dying father: "Father I have you a spirit already, your blue presence cold and final in my mind, Father I leave you your good intentions, can I not tempt you with what you leave behind?". This devastating moment alone makes the album worth its purchase price. But there are many, many other amazing moments. "Sister Song" slyly packages the rich, interpersonal dynamics of twindom for an external observer ("She's never embraced me and I've never kissed her, affection seems bland when you hate your sister"), whereas "Directions" offers the inverse, in an eerie reflection on their all-but-psychic met aphysical connection ("I will be where you will be"). The album is one of singular artistic clarity, which, considering its joint authorship, is a landmark achievement in itself. The music industry at large, for all its self-important bravado about supporting "uncompromising, authentic" artists & bands, should shut up, listen, and learn. This is as honest as the songwriting craft gets."

Twin terrors

joseph Corey | Raleigh, NC United States | 01/07/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For those of you wondering where the Dear Enemy business comes from, it's a the opening to a letter to Jesse Helms. After the criminally mishandled Dish record, Dana could have quit the evil music biz, but instead she teamed up with her twin sister and made a record that has grown on my turntable like the kudzu in the ravine outside my window. I just can't get enough out of "Blue Glass Bottle." Please by this record so Dana will be remembered for something other than being the soft voice on Hole's "Live Through This.""