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Brenda Weiler
Trickle Down
(Barking Dog)
Folk music is full of people who can write insightful lyrics or play terrific guitar, but singer/songwriter Brenda Weiler has something which immediately separates her from the crowd. Having been blessed with a sweet vibrato tucked inside a wonderfully full-bodied voice, Weiler is a rare find indeed. It doesn’t hurt that she also writes insightful lyrics and plays terrific guitar. Little more than Brenda and her guitar on half the tracks, Trickle Down never leaves the listener wanting. Amazingly accomplished for her twenty years, Brenda’s voice rises and dips with an almost casual confidence, gracefully capturing observations and poems alike, then shading them with irony or anguish, sympathy or despair. Her quieter compositions invest in everyday pain and hurt, letting emotions rise to the surface. But by no means is Trickle Down a stark experience. Brenda, along with co-producer Mike Coates, wisely sprinkle feisty numbers like “Dancer” and the exquisite lash-out “Tight” among the longer, more introspective pieces. Shades of Michelle Shocked, Joan Baez, and Iris Dement coarse through the disc, but Weiler remains an original. Trickle Down may talk about the gradual things to come in life, but it arrives like a thunderbolt as soon as Weiler begins to sing.
John Noyd |
