Joy Eden Harrison - Unspoken

Billie Holiday meets Laurie Anderson - moody, jazzy, dark Winner of the 2002 Independent Music Awards (IMA) in the Jazz Category. Judges included Tom Waits, Arturo Sandoval, and Don Byron. 'an impressive jaunt through a multi-textured musical landscape - each track has the feel on a miniature film score' (Pop Culture Press) '...a most remarkable find' --Chicago Tribune Every now and then music lovers come across a musical vision, a voice, so fresh, so bequiling that we have to stop and ask, 'Why haven't I heard this before?' Joy Eden Harrison's, UNSPOKEN, is just such a CD. A collection of eleven mini-stories/songs that take us, the listener, on a Film Noir journey of romantic obsession, love and self-awakening. The film analogy is appropriate here, since this Lower East Side, New York born recording artist is the grand-niece of 1920s film and literary figure, Anzia Yezierska. Our movie begins, like many good stories, at the end. From the rainy day, end of a romance, deluge of 'Forty Days,' to the free form spoken word Mad-hatter abandon of 'Yellow' and closing with a dream of hope, 'The Innocence Begins Again.' Joy Eden Harrison's dark, smoky and occasionally Bille Holiday-like voice leads us through a lush, sometimes scary, and emotionally revealing tunnel of love. Stay with it, this beautiful and wild ride is ultimately a cathartic experience. With a sort of Felliniesque regard for instrumentation, producer Cindy Lee Berryhill assists Harrison's visionary and cinematic soundscape. Pulsing string sections, cartoon bone marimbas, moaning trombones, and ambient washing machine samples all turn up amidst cabaret piano, guitar and drums. All this oddball sonic symphony talk could make you wonder where the floor is at. Yet, Harrison's work is rooted firmly in the pop and jazz traditions of the New York 1930s. Take her Dorothy Parker-ish knack for lyric writing, which goes beyond mere common place word play. Harrison is a master of the wound tight, almost bitter, assuredly humorous, insight. With whiskey-smooth acidic acumen she delivers mighty zingers like: 'He loved this woman so much that he showed her all her faults. He was like a magnifying glass on a brutally sunny day. He fried his love to a crackly-crisp. It was an unfortunate accident.' UNSPOKEN is Harrison's second album. Her critically acclaimed debut, ANGEL TOWN, is embedded in more traditional jazz. Where will this guitar-slinging chanteuse/performance artist go next. REVIEWS: 'Amid the soul-deadening noise of contemporary culture, the most basic matters of the human heart are hidden away in dusty record collections Harrison's bitter-sweet songs conjure those rainy nights when you order another round while the love of your life lies in someone else's arms.' --LA Weekly ' Splendid combination of exceptional vocal ability and guitar prowess Her latest release, UNSPOKEN, is an impressive jaunt through a multi-textured musical landscape. Each track has the feel of a miniature film score seizing upon a different emotional theme: 'Yellow' creates the mood of a 40s film noir, 'Pushing my Luck' is a torchy story of romantic risk taking, 'Everybody's Good Time Girl' bounces along but offers little hope in the end. 'The Secret' is the big surprise as Harrison eerily conjures up the ghost of Billie Holiday and leaves you with no doubt she is for real.' --Pop Culture Press 'Her music swirls in a jazz based pastiche. Her lyrics twist with novel poetic images a highly original writer and performer' --Sing Out! '...and though the magic is yet unexplained, the clues are many, her voice above all is unique, one thinks of Billie Holiday, of a Victoria Williams more jazz than folk, of a young Rickie Lee Jones... but at last it is her songwriting that is astonishing - filled with romantic visions, dark and ironic - each word in it's place...If a European label doesn't take this record in hand you will pass by a great artist of the moment... Joy Eden Harrison is to jazz of the 1930s what Gillian Welch is to folk of the same époque: a beacon of light in an endless night when you have lost all hope.' - Le Cri du Coyote (FRANCE) 'The buzz on this Chicago-based chanteuse's performances has gotten increasingly more intense. This is music I can get excited about there's wit in the words, sophistication in the simplicity and maturity in the music in fact, there is a person in there communicating with ME.' --Sonoma West Times and News.

1) 40 Days and 40 Nights
2) Pushing My Luck
3) Graveyards
4) Everybody's Good Time Girl
5) Rubber Band
6) The Secret
7) Leap in the Dark
8) Reluctant Angel
9) Words
10) Yellow
11) The Innocence Begins Again