Save the Date!

One of my favorite, favorite, favorite local artists ...

Here's my CMB review of Andrea Ball. I love her but had to wait until they published before I could re-publish my work here:

If the first three tracks of Dial Tone don’t usher in Andrea Ball’s real breakthrough, I honestly don’t know if Andrea Ball will break on through or if the other side is all that worthy of our beloved “It Girl.” Note that this is Ms. Ball’s sophomore effort, that she’s back with a new “do” to match a new graphic look -- all hipster-meets-retro-“Mod-Squad” -- and that this is a sophomore effort that has enough oomph-meets-innate-talent and lush-but-focused artistry in its first three tracks to shake up some polls and some charts and some playlists multiple places outside of here. (As if she cares about that! Ha!) On this nine-track CD chock full of standouts -- we’re talking overflowing with stylistic masterpieces -- I’m going on record as saying that the standout among standouts is “Dismantled.” There is knowing and then there is blade-in-the-gut-you-know knowing, so, again, for the record, “Dismantled” will be Andrea Ball’s Big Breakthrough Single. (Come on! She sounds just like Bjork!) While her voice on “Dismantled” is very clipped and Bjork-like -- and I do mean Bjork in her early days as the once-unknown female half of the Sugar Cubes -- she also recalls Rickie Lee Jones, especially in her Magazine days. Other standout tracks, BTW, are “Dial Tone” and “Glass Wall,” a purely poetic conceit. Most tracks, particularly “Plane Crash,” show lyricism that’s on fire and are not just fabulous but crazy-fabulous, but since we still do live in a world of breakthroughs and singles and breakthrough singles, whatnot, hopefully the above-mentioned Bjork-like vocals will overwhelm the scales: “Dismantled” is an amazingly soulful -- fabulous and eerily so -- single if there ever were one.