The album is not dead.

Searchlight Needles is more than proof of that; it is perhaps a shrine to the essence of the album by a gifted and exquisitely articulate singer-songwriter/poet, Jasmine Dreame Wagner. Based in Missoula, MT and Brooklyn, NY, she makes music that is “psychedelic-tinged Americana with elements of electronica and ambient sound.” I honestly could not describe it better than her agent has there. And don’t find that bewildering or off-putting, it’s beautiful and haunting and I haven’t stopped listening to it for five days now. In fact I’m so attached to this CD that I really had to kick myself to write this review.  Somehow it felt like I was letting it go, out into the world and out of my grasp… and that had a certain sadness about it because it’s such a tender, intimate collection of songs,… I wanted it to remain mine, all mine.

But, I’m sure her manager and she will be glad to hear that I have decided to let it go. Afterall, music is for listening and sharing, although I can’t imagine creating such multifaceted pieces as these and letting them fall into the ears of just anybody! Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Ms. Wagner’s musical project has put out the album, Searchlight Needles with ten tracks, ten interrelated parts that flow nicely together but not necessarily into one another. Ms. Wagner’s soft soprano voice is breathy and yet not shallow; it sits beside the instrumentation, not in front of it, and that makes the ambient sound qualities of her art all that more appreciated. There is a lot of folk to the songs in this work, but it’s not just a folk album by any stretch of the imagination. And that’s why I love it so much. Just when I thought it was going to be too twee, too precious, the windchimes start playing up, or the background soundtrack of voices talking, mumbling, muttering throughout, turn the whole piece around.

Yes, it has the usual sharp harmonies that I always write about for songs I love. It has that bittersweet sadness and aching loneliness of isolation that folk music captures so well. And this is an album of slow, introspective prose. Gentle guitars, zither, recorders, xylophone and keyboards accompany the stories she tells. Opening with “Little Ice Age,” you’re immediately thrown off… it’s not exactly decipherable, but it’s so pleasant, then the tambourine starts and we really, really want to know what those words are. She’s cast her spell, I know it’s a worn out metaphor, but this song just feels like a spell. You can’t turn this album off now. The next two tracks feature traditional guitar work and interesting harmonies, but by the time you get to the end of “Cities” you realize she’s been wooing you all along, using scenes of nature and stories of little ones finding their way, to draw you close to her. “Moon” is so quiet and eerie, you turn it up, lean into it, and when it ends on that achingly beautiful echoing voice, it catches you off balance.

But the real moment of commitment comes with “Glass.” You really should hear this. It’s quite unlike the others, and I am smitten with it’s strangeness. It’s perfectly situated in the middle of this well crafted album, surrounded by guitars and sweet vocals, couched between a lover’s breasts, as it were. It’s more an experience than a song, I think. And it show’s the vastness of creative talent of Cabinet of Natural Curiosities as a musical project. What follows are more tenderly sung ballads, more beautiful sounds of a flowing stream, a distant rattle, a bird roosting… so delicately crafted to be music and not sound effects. Finally, a lullaby,  I’m not sure why it seems that every album I’m hearing these days has lullabies on them, but I’m not complaining! This one is wonderfully obvious, “fall asleep…. fall asleep…. cause you are a dream to me” it croons to us sweetly. And then this whole thing is over and you’ve been taken on this trip inside someone’s dream from the beginning of the album to the end, and you start it all over at track one again to see how it will go this time.

For Sparrow mp3Searchlight Needles Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Owllullaby mp3Searchlight Needles Cabinet of Natural Curiosities

buy it here

Searchlight Needles came to me with a book of poetry entitled, Charcoal, with three parts: Charcoal, Black Water, and Glass. The poems are smart, they deal with the themes that poems usually deal with; death, industrialization, love, the poverty of the human spirit in the face of the future and of the past and of humanity in all its mass insanity. I’m not a poet, I read poetry from time to time, and enough to know that this book is “good poetry,” and enough to know that these words are in some way the words behind these songs, but in another form. All the ways we create and express revolve around the same center of gravity, our own preoccupations and fixations and inner demons, do they not? And so when you read my writings here on poetry and on music, and on politics and sex, and on my own past and what it’s like to live in my own here and now, you know that it’s all a bit of a piece. For that reason, if not for the reason that the poetry is “good” and beautiful and moving, buy her book with her CD. I promise you will enjoy both, xoxo

Official website ….. MySpace

Tour dates so far (she promises to come East this summer)