The Breeze
Thursday, March 2, 1995
by Jason Corner
Exuberance Wins on Frosh Album
Charlottesville Singer Brings Fun, Exciting Music to Little
Grill
Everybody reading this remembers their freshman year- I know
I remember significant portions of mine. It's a time of immense
exuberance, excitement, experimentation and other things that
start with the letters "E" and "X".
It's a time to try out different social practices, political
ideas and forms of chemistry, and though some of it is looked
back on with rue, it's always a time of vigor.
"Chapter 1: The Coming of Age" is just such a freshman
effort. It's a hip, fun, enjoyable release from Wendy Repass,
a young singer/songwriter from Charlottesville, home of Dave
Matthews. Oh, and the University of Virginia is there too.
The title of the album is misleading, though. A "coming
of age" is supposed to put youth aside, and replace it
with serenity of maturity. But Repass' disk is far from serene.
Rather, it's a chapter straight out of wild-eyed youth, an evocation
of all of young adulthood's rages, melancholies and generally
undisciplined moods.
This comes out far more in Repass' lyrics than anything else.
Lines like "I deserve better than this/ All that shit I
took before/ Well, I won't take it anymore," though far
from being the best on the album, are indicative of the disk's
mood as a whole, as are such songs as "Nothing's Gonna
Bring Me Down" and "Trust My Heart".
But Repass never sinks into angry-young-woman oblivion, mainly
because she writes such good songs and sings them so well. Her
pronunciation is extremely articulate, although brought up a
bit too high in the mix, and her range is phenomenal. She soars
several octaves above normal human levels and still retains
perfect clarity. As a songwriter she's clearly learned the right
tricks from folk music legend Joni Mitchell- she favors odd,
surprising melodies and minor chords. Her best songs work on
drone principles, where Repass will keep an acoustic riff going
while her other musicians float changes over it.
These other musicians are part of what makes this disk such
a good listen. Only a few of the songs have an actual drum kit
player, but almost all the rest have bongos, congas, shakers
and other percussion instruments played by Darrell Rose and
Raoul (no other name, just Raoul). this is in keeping with the
coffee-house-circa-beginning-of-the-beat-era atmosphere that
the songs have.
Lots of other excellent instrumentation decorate the album
as well. Kevin McNoldy and Jason Kapp both turn in fine bass
performances: Kapp particularly shines on the love song "Lookin'
At You," where he squeezes out fat raindrops of sound against
hypnotic guitar and pounding tom-tom drums; "In the Dirt"
has some of the best syncopated rhythms for triangle I've ever
heard
"Janty" makes good use of instrumentation to develop
a mood. The acoustic guitar and banjo combine with disturbing
lines like "Mama died without her soul/ See the sickness
wither her away/ Run away, Janty, run away/ Come back and bury
ghosts another day" to evoke a dark and windy night in
the mountains, haunted by death and memory.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, "Tiger Wakes"
is the one song that really fails, because Repass strays away
from the moods and textures that profit her elsewhere. This
is the only real "rock" song on the album, and the
guitar and drum work is as sloppy as the slap bass is overdone.
Her voice, though not wispy or breathy, is too clear and bright
for this kind of work and beside, it's drowned out.
This is the only poor song on the album though. Repass develops
many other moods on "The Coming of Age", rage and
vehemence being prominent, but always mediated and made beautiful
by her talents as a singer, songwriter and arranger. She finds
the common ground between anger and discipline, perhaps the
best kind of "coming of age."
