"Kate, what have you done?"
The Muscle (Song for Kate), by Brooklyn based singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer Vanessa Van Ness (by way of Venice Beach, Los Angeles) feels so dark, so heavy in it's poetically askew narrative, and made more so by Van Ness's deadly serious, deep resonant vocal aesthetic, that it feels like a hulking scary presence. You know the kind that you would cross the street to avoid. At the same time, the song pulls you into it's black fog, the Gothic electric guitar picking and Van Ness's magnetic storytelling of an earthbound connection that feels like either the most trustworthy devoted love ever or a dark unhealthy possession. While I feel it is meant to be the former, either way, it is a vast beautifully dark love lullaby.
"across three million countries through many ailing valleys I never knew what home was until I wreaked your bed... even when we're angry even when we don't like what was said"
I must confess that all the dark illusions were just mine. Van Ness reveals that The Muscle is the best possible kind of love song and also gets into some of the talented contributors / process:
"'The Muscle' is an indie LGBTQ love song with a 'ceiling gazer' vibe. It's a lyrically-driven lo-fi lullaby with trippy but tasteful vocal delays and tender guitar work. The song was written for my girlfriend as a gift, and describes an eternal love across continents.
The track was self-produced at home, which gave the rhythm guitar a warm, organic feel. I worked with the Scissor Sisters' mixing engineer, Guus Hoevenaars, in Melbourne, to create an ethereal ambience using stunt delays in order to give the song more dynamics and help set the tone. The track was then mastered by Adam Haggar in Los Angeles, who, purely coincidentally, had also worked with the Scissor Sisters."
Van Ness's vox has me utterly captivated as does her songwriting that feels savage in it's honest declarations. I thought of PJ Harvey and Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde) at the same time.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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Vanessa Van Ness is a Brooklyn-based guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer from Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Before pursuing music she worked in film & television, and would often volunteer as a disaster responder between film shoots. This led her on various disaster relief projects in Ecuador, Nepal, and the American Midwest.
"The work days were typically 12 hours and involved a lot of physical labor," said Van Ness. "Playing music and writing songs was a form of decompression."
Van Ness' debut single, True True Shot, released September 20, 2019, reached #12 on the Hype Machine popular charts, and was written while she was living in Nepal as a disaster responder after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake.
"I didn't have anything to play on in Nepal, so I ended up buying an electric guitar from a teenage boy off of the Nepali equivalent of Craigslist," she told Australia's 4ZZZ. "It was called a Givson GS 1000. When I took it back to the village, some of the local guys who played music laughed at me. I later learned it was considered the worst electric guitar in Nepal and India."
Beginning as a bedroom guitarist inspired by 1950s guitar heroes Bo Diddley, Link Wray, and Howlin Wolf, Van Ness began writing songs at an early age. She was encouraged to sing and release music by friends Ry X and Phil Danyew (Elephant Castle, Foster the People), and began adding vocal elements to her songs while learning audio production on a budget DAW.
Despite having a voice called 'inimitable' by Tonspion, Van Ness says she never considered herself a vocalist until recently. "I was always scared to sing, because I'm not a trained singer. A lot of musicians can sing and hit all the right notes, so the best chance I have is to be myself. I try to focus mostly on my delivery and intention. If I can sing a word in a more interesting or emotive way, then I do it."
Van Ness' second release, 'The Muscle (Song for Kate)', a dreamy LGBTQ indie rock lullaby with lush ambience written for her girlfriend, is slated for release on July 31, 2020.
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