09
Aug
09

Putting the Latin Back Into Carpe Diem: Jessie Evans’ Is It Fire?

Jessie Evans Is It Fire

Jessie Evans and her debut album, Is It Fire, caught my eye because of some its collaborators, including Toby Dammit (Iggy Pop, Swans) and Budgie (The Creatures, Siouxsie and The Banshees), and the fact it was recorded in Berlin by Thomas Stern (Einstürzende Neubauten, Crime and The City Solution). Perhaps that’s not the fairest way to judge whether to listen to a record or not, but in this case, it turned out just swimmingly. The record is a perfect blend between the two places it was created: Mexico and Berlin. There’s Latin flavour pumping through the sultry cabaret vocal style, and there’s some wonky saxophone and Afro-electro beats woven in as well. It’s like a spaced-out Old/New World fusion with a rime of retro cool; the cover art gives you some indication as Evans wields maracas while looking like a Marlene Dietrich figure (in other photos she looks a bit like a 20s flapper). According to her MySpace page, Evans has spent the last decade in bands like The Vanishing, Autonervous and Subtonix, and she has also collaborated with the likes of sexy electro group Glass Candy. Classy and dirty, this album conveys the beauty of the underground, past and present, and transatlantic. A primal sexuality in the lyrics becomes inseparable from the primal rhythm of the music.

The title track sashays in first with Latin percussion and honking saxes, and Evans’ vocals come in with a cool, tantalizing flavour. It makes you want to salsa around on a lit-up disco floor with brisk and tight movements. And the lyrics set the precedent for undisguised, tangible lust: Is it lust that keeps me begging on my knees?/Is it a masochist that makes a fool of me?/Am I wanting you or haunting me oh please.” The percussion varies slightly for Scientist of Love, which showcases a side of Evans’ vocals that sounds a bit like Alison Goldfrapp, but the song still moves its hips to the same Latin beat with some lower, grinding saxophone. When she sings “Come over explorers/let go of your horrors,” she sounds both strong and playful, and throughout the song, she proves that attraction is something that cannot be analyzed mentally. The next track, Blood and Silver, sounds like a fast and loose samba with sprays of sliding trumpet, and Evans sings it completely in Spanish (it’s one of those songs that makes me wish I had cared about keeping up my own trumpet playing). The mood of the album remains spicy with Class Magic, but it also starts to shift into a slightly more electro direction as it pulses with faint synth buzzes. Once again Evans is commanding in her slinky imperatives:

If you feel you’ve got it
Then you better flaunt it
If you want to own it
Then I guess we’d better haunt it
Say it if you mean it
But love it when you leave it
Put your hands together and
We move down to the C now

The slightly more electro-influenced beat continues with Let Me On, but the song feels lighter and more understated than earlier tracks. There is still some tenor sax keeping everything grounded, but with her wispy, breathy “ooh’s,” the song seems to stay on a low simmer rather than a full lusty boil.

Featuring some accordion, Ninos del Espacio also retains some synth sounds to convey the theme of “cosmic lovers” – the electronic elements almost seem to create a sonic wind while Evans’ Spanish lyrics and her alternately smooth and percussive delivery twists and pummels you into submission. After the brief interlude of Micheladas, a sound effects track that sounds like coins rapidly spinning against echoey laughter, Golden Snake slithers in with call-and-answer saxes and distant trumpets. Of all the songs, this one sounds quite retro and cabaret as it writhes to provocative lyrics like “I’m in paradise/Yes its very nice/Got my sex wrapped around my throat/Like a golden snake.” The sounds in Micheladas make sense as Evans continues some coy, throaty laughter, and sings “I’m spinning like a top” while taking on a persona of flapper vamp. Slightly less Latin, Black Sand still has fantastic, lightly flamenco rhythms underneath the electronics. Evans’ vocals are fluid while her musical backdrop is incessantly staccato, making her seduction both lulling and frantic. We move back to a quicker beat with To the Sun, and those intoxicating honking saxophones emerge again; the percussion is allowed really to take centre-stage as the vocal involvement is a minimal drone of “to the sun” in the background. There’s something both jungle-like and Latin going on, or perhaps the song just makes it all the clearer how music evolves and how it links across genres. It’s a long beautiful jam that lasts over nine minutes. The record ends with Sera El Fuego, which is the Spanish version of the title track and takes us to a beautiful full circle while providing a different dimension to the vocal performance.

Tribal and glamorous, Is It Fire? is a pure dance record. You can’t help but move to it as though attached to some preliterate, innate need to make and feel rhythm. I don’t often pay too much close attention to percussion, but for this album, it becomes one of the prominent stars – intricate, insistent, internal. This fact probably points to the fact there are two star percussionists who worked on this album. The beats feel like the most natural in the world while the other musical components combine with Jessie Evans’ voice to create a glamorous, old-style cabaret sound that could be at home in either Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin or Paris. Listening to this record is a sensual experience, the auditory equivalent of mardi gras, carnivale, decadent cabarets; it wreaks rebellion and puts the Latin back in carpe diem.

Scientist of Love – Jessie Evans

Golden Snake – Jessie Evans



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The only certain thing that is left about me

There is no part of my body that has not been used

Pity or pain, to show displeasure's shame

Everyone I've loved or hated always seems to leave

Photobucket

So I turned myself to face me

But I've never caught a glimpse

Of how the others must see the faker

I'm much too fast to take that test

The Smiths Queen is Dead

A dreaded sunny day

So let's go where we're happy

And I meet you at the cemetry gates

Oh, Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day

So let's go where we're wanted

And I meet you at the cemetry gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side

But you lose 'cause weird lover Wilde is on mine

The Clash London Calling

When they kick at your front door

How you gonna come?

With your hands on your head

Or on the trigger of your gun

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Charles Windsor, who's at the door

At such an hour, who's at the door

In the back of an old green Cortina

You're on your way to the guillotine

Here the rabble comes

The kind you hoped were dead

They've come to chop, to chop off your head

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Then you came with your breezeblocks

Smashing up my face like a bus-stop

You think you're giving

But you're taking my life away

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Won't someone give me more fun?

(and the skin flies all around us)

We kiss in his room to a popular tune

Oh, real drowners

Photobucket

Don't walk away

In silence

See the danger

Always danger

Endless talking

Life rebuilding

Don't walk away

Walk in silence

Don't turn away in silence

Your confusion

My illusion

Worn like a mask of self-hate

Confronts and then dies

Don't walk away

Photobucket

You don't want to hurt me

But see how deep the bullet lies

Unaware I'm tearing you asunder

Oh there is thunder in our hearts

Is there so much hate for the ones we love

Tell me we both matter don't we

The Associates Affectionate

I don't know whether

To over or under estimate you

Whether to over or under estimate you

For when I come over

You then put me under

Personal taste is a matter of gender

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I wake at dusk to go alone without a light

To the unknown

I want this night inside of me

I want to feel

I want this speeding

I want that speeding

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You'll never live like common people

You'll never do what common people do

You'll never fail like common people

You'll never watch your life slide out of view

And dance and drink and screw

Because there's nothing else to do

Vanilla Swingers

All I have is words, words that don't obtain

And I feel I'm a stain on your horizon

So I stay away - it's easier that way

And there won't be no-one I need to rely on

Is it him, is it me

Or is there something only I can see

How did I get here, why do we blow around like straw dogs on the breeze

I'm a special one, what they used to say

But I've to stay on, finish levels-A

You don't need exams when you've read John Gray

The Indelicates American Demo

And nobody ever comes alive

And the journalists clamour round glamour like flies

And boys who should know better grin and get high

With fat men who once met the MC5

And no one discusses what they don't understand

And no one does anything to harm the brand

And this gift is an illusion, this isn't hard

Absolutely anyone can play the fucking guitar

JAMC Darklands

And we tried so hard

And we looked so good

And we lived our lives in black

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Plucked her eyebrows on the way

Shaved her leg and then he was a she

She says, hey babe,

Take a walk on the wild side

Said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side

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Hide on the promenade

Etch a postcard:

How I dearly wish I was not here

In the seaside town...that they forgot to bomb

Come, come, come - nuclear bomb

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Back when we were kids

We would always know when to stop

And now all the good kids are messing up

Nobody has gained or accomplished anything

Wire Pink Flag

Prices have risen since the government fell

Casualties increase as the enemy shell

The climate's unhealthy, flies and rats thrive

And sooner or later the end will arrive

This is your correspondent, running out of tape

Gunfire's increasing, looting, burning, rape

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Well, maybe there's a god above

But all I've ever learned from love

Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

It's not a cry that you hear at night

It's not somebody who's seen the light

It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

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And what costume shall the poor girl wear

To all tomorrow's parties

For Thursday's child is Sunday's clown

For whom none will go mourning

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My body is your body

I won't tell anybody

If you want to use my body

Go for it

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Oh it's opening time

Down on Fascination Street

So let's cut the conversation

And get out for a bit

Because I feel it all fading and paling

And I'm begging

To drag you down with me

Mansun Six

And you see, I kind of shivered to conformity

Did you see the way I cowered to authority

You see, my life, it's a series of compromises anyway

It's a sham, and I'm conditioned to accept it all, you see

Japan Gentlemen

Take in the country air, you'll never win

Gentlemen take polaroids

They fall in love, they fall in love

Photobucket

We just want to emote til we're dead

I know we suffer for fashion

Or whatever

We don't want these days to ever end

We just want to emasculate them forever

Forever, forever

Pretty sirens don't go flat

It's not supposed to happen like that

Longpigs The Sun

There's no perfume I can buy

Make me smell like myself

So I put on perfume

To make me smell like someone else

In bed

Calvin Harris I Created Disco

I got love for you if you were born in the 80's, the 80's

I've got hugs for you if you were born in the 80's, the 80's

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Does his makeup in his room

Douse himself with cheap perfume

Eyeholes in a paper bag

Greatest lay I ever had

Kind of guy who mates for life

Gotta help him find a wife

We're a couple, when our bodies double

Simple Minds Sons and Fascination

Summer rains are here

Savaged beauty life

Falling here from grace

Sister feeling call

Cruising land to land

No faith no creed no soul

Half a world away

Beauty sleeps in time

Sound and fury play

Bloc Party Silent Alarm

North to south

Empty

Running on

Bravado

As if to say, as if to say

He doesn't like chocolate

He's born a liar, he'll die a liar

Some things will never be different

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LCD Soundsystem

Well Daft Punk is playing at my house, my house

I've waited 7 years and 15 days

There's every kid for miles at my house, my house

And the neighbors can't...call the police

There's a fist fight brewin' at my house, my house

Because the jocks can't...get in the door

Johnny Boy

I just can't help believing

Though believing sees me cursed

Stars Set Yourself

I am trying to say

What I want to say

Without having to say "I love you"

Josef K Entomology

It took 10 years to realise why the angels start to cry

When you go home down the main

Your happy smile

Your funny name

Cocteau Twins Bluebell

Photobucket

Doesn't she look a million with her hairagami set

Hair kisses 'n' hair architecture

Yes, she's a beautiful brunette angel from heaven with her hairagami set

Hair kisses 'n' hair architecture

Augment a beautiful brunette

New Order Power Corruption

How does it feel

To treat me like you do

When you've laid your hands upon me

And told me who you are

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You must let her go

She's not crying

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Baiting

Feeling like I'm waiting

Modern times

Valentines

Hating

Hating to distraction

Just leave them alone

Whipcrack

Girls in the back

Girls in the back

Puressence Don't Forget

They say come back to earth and start getting real, yeah

I say come back to earth and start getting real

I know I can't

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So I walk right up to you

And you walk all over me

And I ask you what you want

And you tell me what you need

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The problem of leisure

What to do for pleasure

Ideal love a new purchase

A market of the senses

Dream of the perfect life

Economic circumstances

The body is good business

Sell out, maintain the interest

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Sitting in my armchair thinking again and again and again

Going round in a circle I can't get out

Then I look around thinking day and night and day

Then you look around - there must be some explanation

And the tension builds

Psychdedelic Furs

India, India

You're my love song

India, you're my love song

In the flowers

You can have me in the flowers

We will dance alone

And live our useless lives

Ladytron Light Magic

They only want you when you're seventeen

When you're twenty-one

You're no fun

They take a polaroid and let you go

Say they'll let you know

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No consolation prizes

Spit out your lies and chewing gum

Cut off your hair yeah that's it!

If you look like that I swear I'm gonna love you more

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All the neighbors are startin' up a fire

Burning all the old folks, the witches and the liars.

My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kids

But my heart keeps watchin' through the skin of my eyelids

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Prince charming

Prince charming

Ridicule is nothing to be scared of

Don't you ever, don't you ever

Stop being dandy, showing me you're handsome