Angel LaCanfora: Articles/Reviews

The following review was written in 2006 by best-selling author Scott Smith ("A Simple Plan," "The Ruins") I don't know why I never put this review on this site. Better late than never, I guess!
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There's such sadness in these songs--it's in Angel's voice, I think, and is present even when the lyrics are busy undercutting it, as they do most obviously in the very, very funny songs DC Drivers and The Hairdresser. It's not a doom-laden sadness, though, or a self-pitying one; it's a melancholy that feels like a sort of wisdom, a knowledge of the world's weight, and a refusal to pretend or lie or prettify. Hello Cruel World, Blackhole, Haunted: these are very honest songs, delivered to us with touching purity, the sort of music that can seep into you and alter your emotional equilibrium, in the same way that certain types of weather can. Great stuff from a truly talented musician.....

Here's an article regarding Capt.Beefheart's onetime guitarist Gary Lucas, where I get an honorable mention.
Gary Gets a Buzz From The Boss as Gods and Monsters Rocks Light of Day Charity Concert / The Magic Band Gets "Back To The Front" at All Tomorrow's Parties LA

Gary and his longtime band Gods and Monsters (Jonathan Kane and Ernie Brooks) rocked Asbury Park's legendary Stone Pony club on Saturday Nov. 1st in honor of Bruce Springsteen's favorite charities, the Parkinson's Disease Foundation and Muscular Dystophy Association.


After schmoozing with the New Jersey rock elite next door to the club at Jimi's, Gary and his boys made their way into the Stone Pony. The packed club was treated to a stellar variety of guests many of whom had contributed to the new double CD album of Boss cover versions entitled "Light of Day", including Garland Jeffreys, Mike Rimbaud, and Joe Grushecky and the House Rockers. Gary's band did a ripping slide guitar dominated version of the Bo Diddley meets The Yardbirds groove of "Ain't Got You", the lead off track from Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love" album, plus a new psychedelic original instrumental entitled "One Man's Meat" before a very vocal and appreciative crowd. Afterwards, Gary met and shook hands with the Boss, who told him he thought both Gary''s guitar playing and the Gods and Monsters version of "Ain't Got You" was "phenomenal". Gary is still over the moon about this compliment coming from one of rock's greatest, and one of his longtime heroes.



The next day Gary was off to Los Angeles with the reformed Magic Band for their US debut at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival, curated by Matt Groening -- creator of The Simpsons, all around good guy, and champion of outsider music. It was held right next to the dry docked Queen Mary in Long Beach California. Gary "Mantis" Lucas, John "Drumbo" French, Denny "Feelers Rebo" Walley and Mark "Rockette Morton" Boston, along with new auxilliary drummer Michael Traylor tore the roof off the sucker on Saturday Nov. 8th with an incendiary hour-long set illuminated on the outdoor mainstage by a partial lunar eclipse.



It was a Magic hour indeed, kicked off by a speech to the crowd by Matt Groening in which he pronounced the Magic Band his "favorite band" -- and the word among the many thousands of ATP festival goers there to see performances by headliners Sonic Youth, Iggy Pop, and others, was that the Magic Band set was indeed "the set to beat". Many critics there agreed, including writers from Billboard, Variety, and the LA Times.

Backstage visitors congratulating Gary and the guys included former Magic Band bassist Richard Snyder, the lovely Fireparty correspondent of beefheart.com Angel LaCanfora, Gary's sister and brother-in-law, husband and wife journalists Laurie and Ezra Greenhouse, and two of Gary's old Yale cohorts, the actor Bill Moseley (currently on view in HBO's "Carnivale") and film producer Sarah Pillsbury. Observing the concert from out in the parking area due to a slipup at the door was former Magic Band drummer and soundtrack composer Cliff Martinez -- who cell phoned-in his enthusiastic approval of the set, even from that vantage point.



And a splendid time was had by all! Thanks to Barry Hogan of ATP and soundwhiz Bob Weston for the good festival vibes.

A.S.K. - A.S.K. Review
Posted by Nathan Ganley on 09.21.2006

What do you get when you cross Johnny Cash with Divinyls?

A.S.K. is a solo project by Angel Sophia Krasnegor. I started talking to her by simply saying that Les Claypool's book was in fact a rejected movie script (she said that the book should be turned into a movie) and through that I found out about her music site. So, after several more emails she sent me her CD and it's only fair of me to review it.

A.S.K. was born in Glendale and raised in Huntington Beach, California. She currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. She had a love for music from an early age and in her quest to make songs and get noticed she's done a lot of gigs, and his been to a lot of places throughout the world including England, Ireland and of course, various parts of America.

The Stats

Released: 2006
Record Label: n/a
Runtime: 00:24:52

Tracklisting:
1. Hello Cruel World
2. Black hole
3. DC Drivers
4. Haunted
5. Virginia
6. Heritage Lament
7. I Don't Know
8. Louis and Marie
9. The Hairdresser
10. Better Than Yesterday

So, is it any good?

I'll be honest and say I don't like a lot of female vocals, not for a bad reason, I'm all for female vocalists and female bands and such, my ears just don't take a liking to some female vocals. Lucky for A.S.K. I like Christina Amphlett, and A.S.K. just happens to sound a lot like her. It's really uncanny, I'm not sure if A.S.K. is inspired by Divinlys (and no, there's not meant to be a "the" in front) but her voice sure has some similarities to Miss Amphlett.

A.S.K. writes, performs and produces all her song, and you can really feel that there's a lot of effort put into every song. You can sense that she has a love for song making, every aspect of it, and it shines through on this album. This is something I can relate to, playing solo, and recording songs and editing them myself. The most prominent instrument used on the album is her acoustic guitar. She's a great guitarist, and the music itself has a nice solemn feel to it, and it really reminds me of the later works of Johnny Cash.

The songs have a great country experimental feel to them, especially with the use of a keyboard/organ and an echo harp, there really is a great atmospheric feel to the songs. The lyrics themselves are stripped down to very core, and are honest lyrics that reflect things that have happened in her life. There are funny moments on the album too, but most of the album is a serious look into bleak goings-on in A.S.K.'s past. The recording and production of the album is a good fit for the music, it's not cleanly polished and I like it that way because A.S.K. just lets her voice do the work.

My only complaint here would be the lack of songs. This seems to be a running trend with albums I'm reviewing lately, the album is really not long enough. It feels like half an album, and the final song doesn't fade out but ends abruptly. If this album was longer then it'd be near perfect, but sadly it isn't. I can understand the argument that quality is better than quantity, but I'm sure A.S.K. has enough songs in her head that she could have put on this album that would be equally good as the other songs.

Recommended Listening: Hello Cruel World, Haunted, I Don't Know, The Hairdresser

The 411: Short albums are one of my big peeves, and this one is really short. The music is great however, and if you can appreciate some good music that's familiar, but also throws some different things at you along the way, then get this album.
Final Score: 9.0 [ Amazing ] legend

Review of "Grevillea Home Collection"

Female artists have made a strong showing in modern music, but for reasons unknown all but a very few have stuck to a pretty straight path musically. That can't be said of Angel LaCanfora's "The Grevillea Home Collection." This is a strikingly idiosyncratic acoustic record, very much comparable to Skip Spence's "Oar," Syd Barrett's solo LP's, or Robyn Hitchcock's acoustic albums. However, "Grevillea," in spite of comparisons to the above, occupies its own space.

LaCanfora's lyrics are both stream-of-consciousness and cleanly focused, usually within the same song; word-sketches rounded off with a clear and concise chorus. Subject matter varies from meditations on playing guitar in open G tuning ("Similar Drones") to a compassionate and yet ruthlessly honest portrait of a luckless friend ("Carol Says").

Her lucid and intimate alto voice is something else that sets this CD apart. If most female singers are violins, Angel is a viola, maybe even a cello sometimes.

Although on the liner notes she refers to these as her "folk songs," they definitely wouldn't get the Pete Seeger "Sing Out" badge of approval. Nor do they resemble the neo-Americana of the "No Depression" crowd. The elements of folk music are there, but they're bent. For example, on the first song, "It Was Just a Matter of Time," a countryish fiddle suddenly begins to sound ominously John-Cale-Velvets-ish as the song rounds a corner. Even the solo acoustic cover of R.E.M.'s "Feeling Gravity's Pull" carries weight, more naked and angular than the original.

"The Grevillea Home Collection" is, more than anything else, psychedelic in the original sense of the word. You get the impression that LaCanfora is carefully exploring and mapping out her own inner territory and that these are the results. Not that this implies any angst-filled gut-spilling; a sense of control is always present. These are her visions, but you only get to see what she wants you to see. On the other hand, Angel doesn't care to round off the corners of her music too much, either. She's content to let the songs be the way they are with minimal interference. And she doesn't have anything against hooks, although they are subtle ones.

"The Grevillea Home Collection" is honestly one of the more interesting CD's I have heard this year and bears repeated listening. Individualistic but not off-putting, melodic but not cloying, winsome but not pandering. Certainly deserving of wide interest from some visionary record company.