Getting Shivaree in Here

For this post, I hand the reins over to my buddy Richard, who has introduced me to some cool music, including this band fronted by a talented woman. Take it away Richard!

Just a word of warning, this writing is somewhat sexist, but I can’t help it. This is the lead-off track from the latest Shivaree release, ‘Who’s Got Trouble?.’ Shivaree is basically singer/songwriter Ambrosia Parsley and whoever is in her band at the time. I was first turned on to her from a note on KCRW’’s web site. I sampled some of her tunes and was immediately blown away.

That voice just immediately warped itself around my being in a way that can only be described as, well, sensual. She sounds like some lost-soul beat writer/poet from the fifties has been channeled through her to create this sensual, late-night, chain-smoking, druggy aura that is truly intoxicating. If I had to make a comparison, I would say she reminds me of the early Ricki Lee Jones, but with a lot more promise and more depth. Her voice just tumbles out so easily and catches your ear like some sweet vixen you’d like to know but can’t because she is too ethereal to really exist.

She mixes influences from jazz, blues, soul, and some tin-pan alley kitsch and Tom Waits off-centeredness all thrown into a stew that sounds totally new yet totally familiar, all at the same time. And listen to the lyrics closely; she tells tales of love lost and forlorn, but not in a sad, woe-is-me kind of way, but more of an experienced girl/woman who knows “what’’s really goin’’ on”, at least in her head.

But, really, she could sing the phone book and I’’d probably get goose bumps listening to it, or maybe the shivers, or hey, the “Shivarees.” I’ll be her “handsome buckaroo” anytime she wanted to curl-up next to a campfire somewhere in the open West that her sound seems to evoke in my brain. “Get lost in her dream.” It’s well worth the trip. There are currently 3 CDs available, 1 in Europe only (where she is very popular), and one EP. Plus, check out the live taping at the KCRW studio if you want to see her live. Get the “Shivers.”

Shivaree: New Casablanca