"Suspicions deflect with her charm and emotional depth / Gin was a poison you'd never quite smell on her breath..."
The square waltz cadence of "Owls"by Murfreesboro, Tennessee singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer Marlow Shields feels like a cross generational prism. Depending on how the light strikes it you may feel the rainbow glare of 1940's Country & Western or shades or of 60's folk laden Brit pop or 90's bright eyed busker folk emo or mid 2000's indie chamber folk abstractions or maybe a faint remembrance of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical seen on TV eons ago, maybe even all these disparate sounds all at once.
"And I
Follow the serpent's path with contraband
She'll let me in once again
I try, I try
In groves where the wormwood owls call she'd have me observe
She'd wring at her cloth as to wring at the necks of the birds
They'd die
Ferociously yelping out a horrid sound
Ancestors in my mind calling "let her out"
But she'll keep me in once again"
But she'll keep me in once again"
Against mournful, yet painfully pretty instrumentation, Marlow Shields sings dark fables of sorts with a kind of fatherly patter, on the face, not a 'singer' singer's voice but kind of spoken singing, stately and aloof given the sometimes tortured poetic imagery, a vocal countenance like maybe an amalgam of John Flansburgh, Stephen Malkmus, Rufus Wainwright and the Welsh actor Matthew Rhys when he does an American accent. This matter of factly vocal presence against the dramatic sweeping music in some way feels artfully sideways, maybe even a little perverse in a David Lynchian sort of way.
Shields shares this about "Owls":
"Everyone thinks great grandma was a witch, and regardless of if you believe in ghosts or not, tales of strange happenings reveal the psychological truths of a moment. It doesn’t matter if the owls died or were ever really there to begin with. What matters is that there was a generational curse, dowsed in booze and trauma."
I find myself smiling, if crookedly. This unique, amazing track is from Shield's latest album "Fight For Your Life, Pt. 1" and my curiosity had me perusing the album, shallow now, but deeper in the near future. I heard enough to know it is an obtuse stunner crafted carefully with wonderfully talented collaborators playing real instruments.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.instagram.com/marlowjshields/
https://www.facebook.com/marlowjshields
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbC5z02Rc-MlopF-shx58Wg
Songwriter and Producer based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Marlow Shields, singer songwriter / multi-instrumentalist, indie folk, orchestral folk, psychedelic, freak folk, alt pop, experimental, vintage folk, "Owls", latest album "Fight For Your Life, Pt. 1",
Songwriter and Producer based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Marlow Shields, singer songwriter / multi-instrumentalist, indie folk, orchestral folk, psychedelic, freak folk, alt pop, experimental, vintage folk, "Owls", latest album "Fight For Your Life, Pt. 1",
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