From her first album, 1999's Jon Brion-produced Wishbone, to her fifth, 2004's Afternoon (after which Los Angeles magazine named her best local singer and the LA Weekly anointed her as best songwriter), L.A.-based singer/songwriter Eleni Mandell has been feeling the love from critics and her fellow musicians, who have freely offered their hosannas and hot licks, respectively. Impressive, to be sure, but her career to this point is but a tantalizing extended build-up to Mandell’s superb new longplayer, Miracle of Five, which is at once the quintessence and the culmination of her vibrant oeuvre. From the opening song, the hushed, intimate, "Moonglow, Lamp Low," to the closing elegiac ballad "Miss Me," the richly nuanced album maintains its mood and subtle momentum, creating a world of its own. This is without question the young artist’s most coherent album, and her most eloquent, optimistic and beautiful as well.
"I finally figured out after making so many records that maintaining a focus throughout was a good idea," says Mandell. "I used to think that you should do whatever you felt like doing, but looking back, I think the earlier records would’ve been better if they hadn’t jumped around so much, mood-wise."
In order to optimize this crucial undertaking, Mandell assembled a group of talented and supportive players, including Wilco lead guitarist Nels Cline, X drummer DJ Bonebrake (who plays vibes here), her longtime rhythm section of drummer Kevin Fitzgerald and bassist Ryan Feves, reed player Jeff Turmes (James Harman, Badly Drawn Boy) and keyboardist Andy Kaulkin (Merle Haggard, R.L. Burnside), who also produced. Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) did the mixing.
Mandell’s singing on the new album is a revelation; never has her conversational alto sounded more present, or more real. Part of it is due to the unorthodox way her vocals were recorded. The idea came to Kaulkin when he went over to Mandell’s house to hear her new material. “Because she was just relaxing in her living room, singing the songs with an acoustic guitar, rather than trying to belt them out over her band, she sounded great,” he says. “I was really blown away, and I felt like she was on to something. I wish I could take credit for it, but she really found her voice. It seems gentle, but it gets under your skin. She’s got so much character and personality in what she does, and I don’t think that always came across in the past.”
Determined to get the absolute optimum vocal performances out of his charge, Kaulkin started with Mandell’s vocals and nylon-string guitar, recorded solo on the basic tracks; the other musicians would overdub their parts afterward, reacting to her finished vocals. “Recording all the songs by myself did really make a difference,” Mandell confirms. “Andy was a little bit hard on me when he felt I wasn’t quite getting it, but it was great working with him, just knowing he was really paying attention.”
When Kaulkin felt that Mandell hadn’t totally nailed a take, he’d enter the studio from the control room with a tiny finger puppet on his hand. “He’s 6-foot-7, and he has an afro,” she points out, “so he’s a very imposing guy. He’d hold this little puppet in front of me, and the puppet would say, ‘Do it again.’ For the most part it was pretty easy, but he did have the toy tell me that a few times.”
The other factor has to do with the songs she’d written for the album�"songs in which every note and syllable is palpable with meaning “I see Eleni as the missing link between Hoagy Carmichael and Leonard Cohen,” says Kaulkin. “She belongs to an older tradition of American songwriting. I can’t think of another female writer out there right now who expresses herself as articulately as Eleni does. And these new songs are amazing�"much better than anything she’s ever written before. There’s a line in every song that’s gonna stick with you.”
“When I hear my songs, I definitely hear the classic American songwriter/showtunes influence,” Mandell acknowledges. “A lot of jazz standards came from musicals, and a lot of those songs by Gershwin and Cole Porter were originally written for Broadway. My mother took me to shows as a kid, and I listened to the soundtracks over and over. My dad turned me on to practically everything else�"Hank Williams, the Beatles, Bob Dylan.”
Of the dozen original pieces on Miracle of Five, which bear the imprint of all of the above, although thoroughly assimilated into her distinctive style, Mandell acknowledges, “In their way, these are the most positive and hopeful songs I’ve written. They’re not so much about bad relationships or unrequited love as about finding love in the future. So that makes me happy. I’ve taken a turn�"it’s not so interesting to me to be treated badly anymore.” She punctuates the statement with a self-deprecating laugh, as she often does when entering personal territory. “For me, that’s what stands out the most�"that the songs aren’t so self-pitying.”
Mandell describes the largely autobiographical songs of Miracle of Five with characteristic candor�"she can’t help telling the truth. The opening “Moonglow, Lamp Low,” she explains, “is a simple song about looking for love�"again�"and also looking out my window, which is where I wrote it, as the sun was going down. I think it sort of sweetly sets the tone of the record.”
“Make-Out King,” she reveals, is about her new boyfriend�"“who’s no longer the make-out king,” Mandell says with a schoolgirl giggle. “It was nice to have the hopefulness of the song translated into real life.” She pauses. “It’s always embarrassing to explain my songs because so many of them are kind of literal,” she says. “‘The Miracle of Five,’ for example, refers to a person’s fingers. You experience the simplest moment of holding someone’s hand, and you think, ‘Wow, what a miracle, five fingers holding my hand.’ See, it is embarrassing�"my temperature just went up. ‘My Twin’ is hopeful, but in a dark way�"that somewhere out there is some perfect person for you, but is it possible that he was on his way to meet you, and, as fate would have it, he died in a plane crash?” Another laugh. “There’s a little positivity in there.”
“Perfect Stranger,” it turns out, is Mandell’s idea of a road song. “It came from something that really happened to me,” she says, unnecessarily. “I don’t get crazy on tour, but as I was winding up the tour for the last record in Tucson, I met a guy and had this lovely snapshot of a romantic encounter�"a magical night where we ended up walking around Tucson in the wee hours of the morning. We became friends after that.”
Another road song, this one absolutely literal, is “Salt Truck,” which Mandell conjured up as she and her bandmates were trying to get from Detroit to New York on the I-80 during a treacherous winter storm. “It was just harrowing,” she remembers, “and any time a salt truck would appear to lay down the salt on the road, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. So it became a kind of metaphor.”
That’s what happens with these extraordinary new songs�"they begin with real-life experiences and blossom into multi-dimensional expressions of the human condition, all of it captured in the caressing yet charged sound of Mandell’s voice. So if you think you know Eleni Mandell, think again. Miracle of Five puts her in a new light, and on a new level of artistic achievement. Hearing her new album is like hearing this captivating artist for the very first time.
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Eleni Mandell: The Sexiness of Subtlety
By John Schacht
(Paste, April, 2004)
Forget Britney and Madonna stage-snogging at some MTV function or Janet's "wardrobe malfunction." Nothing's quite as sexy as the first hushed whispers of "American Boy," the opener of Eleni Mandell's fifth full-length release, Afternoon. By the time you reach the radioactive heat generated by the penultimate "Dangerous," you'll find that Afternoon has caressed your face, breathed its hot breath gently into your ear, pulled you into the bedroom, and � well, you can picture the rest which is precisely the point.
"Sexy to me is sincere, subtle and mysterious," says Mandell, citing the allure of Grace Kelly as an example.
Mandell freely admits she has an "overactive imagination," and on Afternoon the leash comes off. A master storyteller (like a key influence, Tom Waits), Mandell roots around in the darker corners of what the simple-mined might call dysfunctional relationships. It's a rich vein to mine, as she always emerges with unforgettable characters, noir-ish victims of their own desires. Afternoon's cast includes the sexy mistress ("afternoon"), the longing lover ("American Boy"), the mistreated girlfriend ("Can't you See I'm Soulful," "County Line") and the carnal girl at the heart of every man's fantasy ("Dangerous").
Her previous release, Country for True Lovers, was a change-up from earlier, cabaret-rock-based records, corralling praise from both the country and alt.country communities. Afternoon splits the difference, returning in part to the L.A.-noir rock of Mandell's first three records while maintaining a soulful twang in places - courtesy of Joshua Grange's pedal steel. The City of Angels can be notoriously cruel to dreamers and Mandell remains there, but that's part of the draw, says Mandell. The musical cross-pollination has resulted in what she calls her "most accessible" record yet.
"I still have moments when I wish I could have the validation of the record industry, and a big paycheck would be nice," she confesses. "But being independent, I don't have the hassle of the suits telling me what to do, and I get to make great music that I'm proud of and have a hell of a good time doing it."
"I finally figured out after making so many records that maintaining a focus throughout was a good idea," says Mandell. "I used to think that you should do whatever you felt like doing, but looking back, I think the earlier records would’ve been better if they hadn’t jumped around so much, mood-wise."
In order to optimize this crucial undertaking, Mandell assembled a group of talented and supportive players, including Wilco lead guitarist Nels Cline, X drummer DJ Bonebrake (who plays vibes here), her longtime rhythm section of drummer Kevin Fitzgerald and bassist Ryan Feves, reed player Jeff Turmes (James Harman, Badly Drawn Boy) and keyboardist Andy Kaulkin (Merle Haggard, R.L. Burnside), who also produced. Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) did the mixing.
Mandell’s singing on the new album is a revelation; never has her conversational alto sounded more present, or more real. Part of it is due to the unorthodox way her vocals were recorded. The idea came to Kaulkin when he went over to Mandell’s house to hear her new material. “Because she was just relaxing in her living room, singing the songs with an acoustic guitar, rather than trying to belt them out over her band, she sounded great,” he says. “I was really blown away, and I felt like she was on to something. I wish I could take credit for it, but she really found her voice. It seems gentle, but it gets under your skin. She’s got so much character and personality in what she does, and I don’t think that always came across in the past.”
Determined to get the absolute optimum vocal performances out of his charge, Kaulkin started with Mandell’s vocals and nylon-string guitar, recorded solo on the basic tracks; the other musicians would overdub their parts afterward, reacting to her finished vocals. “Recording all the songs by myself did really make a difference,” Mandell confirms. “Andy was a little bit hard on me when he felt I wasn’t quite getting it, but it was great working with him, just knowing he was really paying attention.”
When Kaulkin felt that Mandell hadn’t totally nailed a take, he’d enter the studio from the control room with a tiny finger puppet on his hand. “He’s 6-foot-7, and he has an afro,” she points out, “so he’s a very imposing guy. He’d hold this little puppet in front of me, and the puppet would say, ‘Do it again.’ For the most part it was pretty easy, but he did have the toy tell me that a few times.”
The other factor has to do with the songs she’d written for the album�"songs in which every note and syllable is palpable with meaning “I see Eleni as the missing link between Hoagy Carmichael and Leonard Cohen,” says Kaulkin. “She belongs to an older tradition of American songwriting. I can’t think of another female writer out there right now who expresses herself as articulately as Eleni does. And these new songs are amazing�"much better than anything she’s ever written before. There’s a line in every song that’s gonna stick with you.”
“When I hear my songs, I definitely hear the classic American songwriter/showtunes influence,” Mandell acknowledges. “A lot of jazz standards came from musicals, and a lot of those songs by Gershwin and Cole Porter were originally written for Broadway. My mother took me to shows as a kid, and I listened to the soundtracks over and over. My dad turned me on to practically everything else�"Hank Williams, the Beatles, Bob Dylan.”
Of the dozen original pieces on Miracle of Five, which bear the imprint of all of the above, although thoroughly assimilated into her distinctive style, Mandell acknowledges, “In their way, these are the most positive and hopeful songs I’ve written. They’re not so much about bad relationships or unrequited love as about finding love in the future. So that makes me happy. I’ve taken a turn�"it’s not so interesting to me to be treated badly anymore.” She punctuates the statement with a self-deprecating laugh, as she often does when entering personal territory. “For me, that’s what stands out the most�"that the songs aren’t so self-pitying.”
Mandell describes the largely autobiographical songs of Miracle of Five with characteristic candor�"she can’t help telling the truth. The opening “Moonglow, Lamp Low,” she explains, “is a simple song about looking for love�"again�"and also looking out my window, which is where I wrote it, as the sun was going down. I think it sort of sweetly sets the tone of the record.”
“Make-Out King,” she reveals, is about her new boyfriend�"“who’s no longer the make-out king,” Mandell says with a schoolgirl giggle. “It was nice to have the hopefulness of the song translated into real life.” She pauses. “It’s always embarrassing to explain my songs because so many of them are kind of literal,” she says. “‘The Miracle of Five,’ for example, refers to a person’s fingers. You experience the simplest moment of holding someone’s hand, and you think, ‘Wow, what a miracle, five fingers holding my hand.’ See, it is embarrassing�"my temperature just went up. ‘My Twin’ is hopeful, but in a dark way�"that somewhere out there is some perfect person for you, but is it possible that he was on his way to meet you, and, as fate would have it, he died in a plane crash?” Another laugh. “There’s a little positivity in there.”
“Perfect Stranger,” it turns out, is Mandell’s idea of a road song. “It came from something that really happened to me,” she says, unnecessarily. “I don’t get crazy on tour, but as I was winding up the tour for the last record in Tucson, I met a guy and had this lovely snapshot of a romantic encounter�"a magical night where we ended up walking around Tucson in the wee hours of the morning. We became friends after that.”
Another road song, this one absolutely literal, is “Salt Truck,” which Mandell conjured up as she and her bandmates were trying to get from Detroit to New York on the I-80 during a treacherous winter storm. “It was just harrowing,” she remembers, “and any time a salt truck would appear to lay down the salt on the road, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. So it became a kind of metaphor.”
That’s what happens with these extraordinary new songs�"they begin with real-life experiences and blossom into multi-dimensional expressions of the human condition, all of it captured in the caressing yet charged sound of Mandell’s voice. So if you think you know Eleni Mandell, think again. Miracle of Five puts her in a new light, and on a new level of artistic achievement. Hearing her new album is like hearing this captivating artist for the very first time.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Eleni Mandell: The Sexiness of Subtlety
By John Schacht
(Paste, April, 2004)
Forget Britney and Madonna stage-snogging at some MTV function or Janet's "wardrobe malfunction." Nothing's quite as sexy as the first hushed whispers of "American Boy," the opener of Eleni Mandell's fifth full-length release, Afternoon. By the time you reach the radioactive heat generated by the penultimate "Dangerous," you'll find that Afternoon has caressed your face, breathed its hot breath gently into your ear, pulled you into the bedroom, and � well, you can picture the rest which is precisely the point.
"Sexy to me is sincere, subtle and mysterious," says Mandell, citing the allure of Grace Kelly as an example.
Mandell freely admits she has an "overactive imagination," and on Afternoon the leash comes off. A master storyteller (like a key influence, Tom Waits), Mandell roots around in the darker corners of what the simple-mined might call dysfunctional relationships. It's a rich vein to mine, as she always emerges with unforgettable characters, noir-ish victims of their own desires. Afternoon's cast includes the sexy mistress ("afternoon"), the longing lover ("American Boy"), the mistreated girlfriend ("Can't you See I'm Soulful," "County Line") and the carnal girl at the heart of every man's fantasy ("Dangerous").
Her previous release, Country for True Lovers, was a change-up from earlier, cabaret-rock-based records, corralling praise from both the country and alt.country communities. Afternoon splits the difference, returning in part to the L.A.-noir rock of Mandell's first three records while maintaining a soulful twang in places - courtesy of Joshua Grange's pedal steel. The City of Angels can be notoriously cruel to dreamers and Mandell remains there, but that's part of the draw, says Mandell. The musical cross-pollination has resulted in what she calls her "most accessible" record yet.
"I still have moments when I wish I could have the validation of the record industry, and a big paycheck would be nice," she confesses. "But being independent, I don't have the hassle of the suits telling me what to do, and I get to make great music that I'm proud of and have a hell of a good time doing it."
