Review by Richie Unterberger
In part because it was released on Devendra Banhart's Gnomonsong label, Rio en Medio's debut album attracted instant attention among devotees of the sort of odd, spacy folk-based music popularized by Banhart and Joanna Newsom in the preceding years. The wispy vocals and delicate, eccentric songs of Rio en Medio, aka Danielle Stech-Homsy, are embellished by all manner of imaginatively eerie instrumentation and effects on this set, which sometimes has the feel of a folk troubadour trying to sing her way out of a psychedelically echoing bottle or cave. If this is folk, it's only in the loose sense that her ukulele and gentle if off-kilter songs are often at the center. The layered "soundscapes" (as some of Stech-Homsy's contributions are labeled in the credits) will remind listeners with deep folk-rock record collections of the kinds of miscellaneous ghostly noises and tinkles floating around Tim Buckley's folk-psych-rock song "Hallucinations"; the tracks with trippily overlapping voices and sounds might bring to mind some of the weirdest cuts on Linda Perhacs' cult album Parallelograms; and her shy peeping vocals recall those of Vashti Bunyan in some respects. Perhacs and Bunyan were so obscure before 2000 that it would have seemed absurd to cite them as influences on anyone, but as they've been declared favorites of Banhart's, it doesn't seem impossible that they could be reference points for Rio en Medio; certainly there are similarities. Stech-Homsy isn't a pale imitator, though; some of the textures (particularly the ones that sound like radio voices or oncoming/ebbing waves) are both unlike, and a little more disquieting, than anything heard on Perhacs or Bunyan records. The lyrics -- some taken from literary texts (and credited as such on the sleeve) such as William Blake's and a Baghdad travelogue, and some by Stech-Homsy -- are more part of the overall mood than elements that grab hold of your attention, but are effectively evocative complements to the varied, spooky ambiences and settings. Though not for everyone, it's an impressively creative debut, and should appeal to adventurous listeners beyond the usual hardcore cult for oddball indie folk-rock recordings.
Rio en Medio
The Bride of Dynamite
[Gnomonsong; 2007]
Rating: 5.6
During his brief career moonlighting as an unofficial talent scout, Devendra Banhart has revealed a weakness for a certain stripe of ethereal, folk-inclined female vocalist. His enthusiasm was instrumental in reviving the careers of long-lost 60s-era performers Vashti Bunyan and Ruthann Friedman, and he has also offered similar support to such younger acts as Natasha Khan's Bat for Lashes and Dallas singer Jana Hunter, whose marvelous 2005 debut album Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom was the first release on Gnomonsong, the label Banhart operates with Vetiver's Andy Cabic. So it shouldn't generate much shock to learn that Gnomonsong's latest discovery, Rio en Medio, the solo project of vocalist/instrumentalist Danielle Stech-Homsy, shares several traits in common with each of these other Banhart favorites.
Co-produced by the Pernice Brothers' Thom Monahan, Rio en Medio's debut The Bride of Dynamite features cameo appearances from Cabic, CocoRosie's Sierra Casady, and David Coulter. Despite this amassed talent, however, the project belongs entirely to Stech-Homsy, and is centered almost exclusively on her delicate, Vashti-like vocals, a few drifting samples, and her baritone ukulele-- an instrument that sounds considerably less exotic in action than it first might appear.
Yet when listening to The Bride of Dynamite, one has to wonder if perhaps Banhart and Gnomonsong might not be getting somewhat ahead of themselves. Stech-Homsy recorded the bulk of this material on her own, with no original intention to release it, and not surprisingly much of it sounds like what used to be quaintly known as a demo tape. With its spare arrangements and extensive use of empty spaces, the album's construction does little to camouflage the fact that Stech-Homsy has yet to fully get her legs beneath her as a songwriter, and as a result too many of these intimate, elliptical pieces feel more like private exercises than vibrant, fleshed-out songs.
Adding to The Bride of Dynamite's diffuse impact is Stech-Homsy's decision to cull many of its lyrics from a variety of pre-existing texts. Album opener "You Can Stand" takes its lyrics from a 19th century poem by Ellen Gates, while "Europe a Prophecy" cribs William Blake. Other tracks borrow from poets John Ashbery and Paul Eluard, as well as a vintage Baghdad travelogue by author Freya Stark. And though these texts do provide the album with a valuable multiplicity of voice and perspective, they often do so at the expensive of any kind of authorial continuity and cohesion.
Then again, Stech-Homsy fares little better on such self-penned tracks as the cloying "Tiger's Ear" or the mawkish lullaby "Everyone Is Someone's". "Everyone is someone's sweet little baby... we were meant for love," she coos contentedly on the latter over a thin gauze of ukulele, handclaps, and flitting samples of children's voices-- the ghostly sounds of their disembodied laughter inadvertently lending the tune a vaguely creepy, unsettling overtone. Considerably more successful are group-oriented works such as the sturdy, cello-driven "Girls on the Run" or the lightly percolating "Joe Was on the Plane" which is bolstered by Tim Fite's electronics and Coulter's evocative work on singing saw. These pieces suggest Stech-Homsy to be well-suited to writing for a larger ensemble, and reports of her further collaborations with Fite sound promising, particularly when contrasted with the halting, hesitant baby steps publicly displayed on The Bride of Dynamite.
-Matthew Murphy, March 13, 2007
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