Women and Children
Ever get the feeling that these days, no band’s confident enough to enter the studio without a small army of producers, engineers, cameo-making friends, a string section, half a marching band and a trailer load of outdated keyboards, drum machines and samplers? Or that the notion of writing songs that are still effective without a multi-tracked, multi-layered studio arrangement to back it up is a lost art?
Women and Children ought to renew your faith in the old ways—the era when songwriting and simplicity were tantamount to musical success—as an ever-increasing horde of orchestrated goofs wears away our faith in the studio. Paralyzed: Dance Tonight is minimalism in action: The band’s open, almost skeletal songwriting and no-frills production won’t grease its way into our ears with a lot of high-powered studio trickery. Instead, the American/Canadian/French outfit does it the old-fashioned way, through clever songwriting and a straight-to-tape aesthetic that’s a much-needed remedy to the over-orchestrated blues.
Sounding like an act that’s equally influenced by Alan Lomax, The Fairport Convention and Bright Eyes, Women and Children make minimalist indie folk-pop that strangely removes itself from the context of its influences and contemporaries. Many tracks feature nothing but a clean-channel guitar, an unadorned rhythm section and its alternating male and female vocals, as the act touches on a staggering depth of directions. Paralyzed Dance:
Tonight sounds like everything from anorak-sweater wearing British folkies trying on Appalachian blues for a kick (“Mary Blues”), hipsters jazzed on Nirvana’s take on Leadbelly (“General Winter”) or a haunting a-capella number that shows singer/guitarist Cheryl June Serwa can hold her own without any instrumental adornment (“Sweet Spirit”). Women and Children also find time to dust of the piano for a few doses of innocent upright fun that sounds as if the act’s found a stash of lost Beatles compositions (“Virginia
Creepers”) .
Women and Children aren’t averse to adding a few bells and whistles to Paralyzed Dance: Tonight when the moment’s right. “Born TP” drops a hint of echo on singer/guitarist Kevin Lasting’s vocals to underscore its spacious feel. “Polly Ann” adds a touch of rusty violin that comes from a barn dance, not an orchestral pit, and “Ugly” calls forth a flurry of hillbilly extras.
Women and Children’s add-ons are modest and far between, however, as the band tends to let its songwriting speak for itself: Paralyzed Dance probably sounds pretty close to the way its songs were written in bedrooms and living rooms, with few effects and overdubs to cloud the issue. It’s recording to capture great songwriting, not cover its flaws.
