Juliana Finch: Press

How To Take the Fall, Juliana Finch's latest release is almost a completely self-penned album with the eternal themes of love, loss and longing. The girl who is throwing her heart around so easily doesn't belong to a particular age or fashion era - she's any girl who has taken chances on love since her teens. If she's like most of us, she's taken more than a few chances, and the characters in Finch's songs reflect this tendency to lead with the heart.

"Joshua" talks about longing for a boy oblivious to how the narrator pines for unreturned affection. "Carrying You" is another song, sung in duet, about a reluctance to let go after creating phenomenal memories with someone. Its story is reminiscent of Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go."

"Love Like You" is a first person narrative song told with Biblical analogies, accompanied by pedal steel and electric guitar for an old-fashioned country mood, it is one of the strongest tunes in the collection.

"The Wind that Shakes the Barley," a Celtic ballad about losing a lover in a brawl, is the only thing here that's not original. The song is accompanied by strings while an authentic bodhrán keeps rhythm. The same violin is combined with saxophone and electric guitar in "Rattle Snake" for a modern female self-declarative ballad. The listener takes a 150 year leap in American History between these two songs, one moment its 1860 among Irish-Americans, the next its 1995.

"Glass Heart" and the title track use Finch's vocal and loops, or guitar, resembling Annie Lennox's solo work. If Lilith Fair had a reunion show, Finch would easily share the stage with Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, Tracy Chapman and Shawn Colvin. But this album is not so much about being female as it is about crafting material where every word of every story is meant and felt. (Self-released)

Simply the best pop album in two years


This is easily the best pop album I have come across in the last two years. "How To Take The Fall" is an amazing blend of different styles, reaching far beyond the standard beats of modern acoustic pop to bring in tastes of smooth, almost psychedelic country, then pulling back for sweet three-beat piano ballads, then running into powerfully paced trad. Infused throghout is Finch's amazing vocal tonal color. It sounds the way that soft, well-aged bourbon tastes, but only if you're drinking that bourbon while watching an autumn sunset from your red-clay dusted back porch. Personal and heartfelt, her style is emotional without the common tendency of singer-songwriters to drag the audience into his/her own issues. Her lyrics are likewise touching, and unlike so many other songwriters these days, they do so without becoming abstract. This is music that goes from the desk to the highway, from the bedroom to the kitchen, and from cool Friday nights to slow Sunday afternoons.

When she sings, her voice emerging in a hail of whispers and bellows, Juliana Finch shines.

As with a lot of young singer/songwriters, much of Finch's music delves into that well-explored territory of heartbreak, falling for someone new, and those other turmoils de amor.

However, unlike a great many such musicians, Finch employs a diverse set of dramatic lenses for spotlighting these well-worn subjects.

Take, for instance, the song "The Tip of my Tongue," about the stuttering inability to express oneself in the presence of a love interest. Finch's very humanizing take on this universal humiliation makes her seem both strong and vulnerable: She's quite confident expressing her extreme lack of confidence.

The [22]-year-old performer borrows from a variety of sources, combining visceral blues phrasing with the intimacy of a breathy, modern-folk songstress. Finch's other musical interest, the black-comedy charm of Irish folk ballads, rounds her style out nicely.