The sun spills through the skylights this morning, bright as can be. The cats lounge in the living room, peering out the side windows in hopes of spying the punk chipmunks, chump squirrels, and dastardly deer that often troll them from the foliage. Meanwhile, here in my den, my tired eyes scan the screen in search of hippos that squeeze into sentences despite their voluminous girth. How I miss them, I’ll never understand.
Carmen Quill’s Harmless is an engaging avant-pop outing. It’s intimate and enchanting, sparse yet symphonic, and solemn yet whimsical. The space between notes reverberates through the album’s nine tracks, with some passages focused on just her vocals and resonant bass, while others gently lap into into jazzy arrangements. At times, she reminds me of Suzanne Vega circa Solitude Standing, albeit more eccentric and jazzy. “Harmless,” released as a single in early September, is a solid example; her vocal floats across the ethereal soundscape as if a cirrus cloud, while clarinet and viola add some cumulus oomph. Lyrically, it aptly captures a feeling many of us have when faced with the utter insanity that passes for modern politics: “Every day my arm is twisted by some guy i cannot see.”
“Perseid Afternoon” is an epiphany set to song, just about, with wordless vocals coloring a minimalistic melody. “Minimalistic” is actually a solid description for her approach to lyrics, too. She eschews typical song construction, often imparting one image or emotion. (She forgoes stanza-stanza-chorus, in other words.) To writ, “Always in My Mind” opens with the song title repeated ad infinitum before a jazzy bass-led break unveils a confession: “Staying, creeping, kind of freaking out, I don’t know how to start/to make some space between the shoulders of this beating heart.” As with the album in full, it’s a riveting listen.
“I Wanna See You Again,” which finds her singing in her upper register, conveys a sentiment many of experience with loved ones old and new, long passed or still with us. Album closer “Pieces of Gold” is blue sky accented by puffy clouds, and decidedly quizzical about identity and love: “You are not what you do, or you are what you say, but you’re not how you feel some time of day.”
The Brooklyn-based Quill has an impressive CV, I should add. A double bassist and composer, she’s collaborated with a slew of innovative artists over the past good while, including Adam Schatz and Asa Horvitz, while also performing with the post-rock/jazz instrumental band Scree. And although Harmless is her sophomore solo set, she released the live (and more traditional) jazz album I’ll Be Thinking of You on Thursday with pianist Jacob Sacks and drummer Billy Hart in September; it’s well worth tracking down. Backing her on Harmless are Scree bandmates Ryan El-Solh (guitar) and Jason Burger (drums), plus clarinetists Ivan Arteaga and Kristina Teuschler, and violist Dana Lyn.
