She's enigmatic, is Ms. Riddle. This beautifully presented CD is illustrated, not with a photo of the artist, but with cartoonish pictures of people in oversized animal masks: a reference to the title track which itself is oblique in its meaning.
Information on the cover is limited to song titles, and musician/production credits. A website address is the only, indirect, invitation to find out more about this intriguing performer. When I looked up miariddle.com I was absolutely astonished to discover she's a New York-based Californian. Everything about her singing and songwriting sounds British to me - the accent and the style seem entirely so, and it was only the occasional lyrical reference that had made me wonder if she might be Canadian.
She describes her songs as "indie-torch", and several reviewers have described the sound as rock. Well the band can clearly rock if they want to, but she started as a solo acoustic performer, and, really, the band is embellishing that basic sound without drowning it. Just as well, because her voice and singing style - a kind of fractured delicacy - would be lost if her band was less sensitive and restrained.
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Her lyrics, not always easily deciphered, seem to discuss a young woman's life in oblique but thoughtful terms, a sense of detachment generally pervading things, so not really the kind of overblown emotion that I, for one, would associate with "torch" songs.
That delicacy in the singing and playing, however, is spun around a core of steel - the songs don't seem to have hooks, exactly, but nonetheless become distinctively memorable, each with it's mood built up from deceptively simple elements. Good stuff, then, maybe a Janis Ian for a new generation.
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