13 Magazine
April 1995
Keith Schweiert
Wendy Repass
Chapter 1: The Coming of Age
Ahh, yes. Life is full of simple pleasures. Take the music of
Wendy Repass. Her CD, entitled Chapter 1: The Coming of Age is
a great diversion from the over-produced, over-mixed, look-I-know-three-chords-so-I'm-a-rock-star
world of today's music scene.
What makes Repass so different? Really, she's nothing more than
your average folk singer. The music is mainly acoustic, with a
violin and some Afrikan percussion thrown in for good measure.
Add an electric base guitar for some modern flavor. Very little
backup singers; just a few instruments and Repass' voice.
Oh, yeah- there's where she stands out.
What separates Repass from others in her genre is her voice.
Repass is passionate without being overbearing, showing excellent
range. She belts out her lyrics (which show originality and creativity
that is far too lacking in recent music) with great emotion; you
can tell that she treats her songs like her offspring and not
like something she penned to earn a few bucks with a video on
MTVH-1.
In her first track, called "Hope in A New Day," Repass
examines herself- her desires, her dreams, her regrets. "I'm
not the girl I was yesterday, though I try to find her within"
she sings. "She floats away a paper doll, burnt to
ashes, scattered in the wind/ I try to cut out other faces, replace
the emptiness that remains/ But my confusion while burning hope,
also catch my loved ones in the flame."
Other songs on the CD touch on problems we all have, from unrequited
love to general frustration to ending a bad relationship. Through
it all, Repass remains believable; she can sing about the depression
of loving someone who doesn't feel the same way and about how
the lack of love in a relationship can make you feel imprisoned,
without coming off as someone who hasn't had the experiences she's
writing about.
Repass soothing voice and poetic lyrics, added to her mellow-yet-catchy
melodies, conjure images of laying in a field watching the clouds
roll by, or sitting on a dock on a bay wasting time. It's a relaxing
alternative to the recycled sounds that fill the record shelves
these days. Originality: what a concept.
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