Search - Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone :: On and Off

Strange, spooky and marvellous

lexo1941 | Edinburgh, Scotland | 03/20/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone are a guitar/viola duo operating out of New York City. I bought this album on the strength of an article on Halvorson in 'Guitar Player' magazine that made her sound interesting; she liked a lot of the same players as I do, and this was the only album by her I could find.



On the strength of this album, Halvorson and Pavone aren't going to be making it into the Top 40 any time soon, although in some respects they are a perfectly ordinary guitar-pluckin', viola-playin', song-singin' duo. They describe their music somewhere as modern campfire music, and if so it's one of those campfires where a very disturbed guy in a hockey mask wielding a chainsaw is lurking in the undergrowth. Odd, angular, sometimes lovely melodies coexist with dissonant clanging chords; passages of simple chordal playing are succeeded by bits of harsh, stabbing improv. Both women have endearingly guileless voices. The effect is kind of like the Shaggs went to Juilliard. There are echoes of Bartok, Cecil Taylor, Philip Glass, but really it isn't like anything else I've ever heard.



I do wish they'd written better lyrics (the title tracks consists of the words 'On and off' sung over and over again), but the music is elegant and intriguing, the playing is sometimes really risky and it's definitely music for a rainy Sunday morning when you're feeling adventurous. Alt-jazz-country-noise-folk, if that makes any sense."