Emeline Michel is a phenomenal Haitian chanteusse, with a voice that goes from deep and growling to carefree and rhythmic at will. Just as good recorded as in concert, too. She's one of those artists that anyone with any kind of taste in music can drop in on and tell she's just plain good at what she does. Her album "Reine de Coeur" is over and over on my ipod right now. Some songs are jazzy, some highly Haitian, some sound more Brazilian or Cuban, and whether the song makes you want to bounce around nonstop with a big grin on your face like the 8 month old I babysit did when she heard Michel's music, makes you want to chill out with a slight head bob on a beach somewhere, or makes you stand stock-still entranced by the lushness of her tone and instrumentals, each song is a rich, unique offering of its own.
I can't even describe Freshlyground fully. Just look it up.
She hasn't played the Pub yet, but I highly recommend Alice Smith. She'll be there for our afterparty show at 1a.m. on New Years Eve, and she's sure to rock/neo-soul/belt us all out of the water. She has some kind of ridiculous vocal range and her music is soul-filled in one stylistic sense or another in all the best ways (one track on her 2006 album, "For Lovers, Dreamers, & Me," opens with a bluesy piano riff, another with show-tune-esque chords, others with those beloved synthesized soul grooves), but pretty much every single song has a distinctly rock-and-roll drum edge that causes all kinds of body-rocking. She has two more shows in January 2010, and is finally debuting some of her new album. Come.
