Ariel Strasser’s first album Crooked Line is a collection of warm piano-driven pop songs that pull you in with her sweet, strong vocals, peppy melodies, and a clarity of sound that lets her voice and piano ring out with pulse and purpose. Strasser can also make her listener feel something significant in each song, and that is a serious sign that there is something special going on with this artist.
Title track “Crooked Line” opens the album with its joyful, jaunty pace and sprightly melodies. Strasser’s fulsome piano lines and vocal highs make you feel her acceptance of the way she and others mess things up in their worlds. Upright bassist Max Judelson keeps a nice low end nuance underneath it all. Nate Tucker’s persistent drum fills give it another layer of bounciness
The emotional honesty of “I Remember Everything” is striking in its admission of avoidance. Strasser puts heart and soul into this one, making the listener feel what she was likely feeling when she wrote and recorded this. She also employs multiple vocal techniques, sustains, coos, and whispery lines all forged into the emotional core of this piece. As a pianist, Strasser has an advanced sense of how to play a lot of feeling out of those ivories with light, gentle touches and unobtrusive chords.
“These Are The Things I‘ve Learned” moves joyfully along a lilting beat. Strasser suddenly shifts into a slightly speedier chorus, pulling us in like a pied piper with this and other artful means. Listeners can feel Strasser’s desire to share her knowledge with others. Listen closely and you’ll hear her use of advanced technique. She has the taste to put a pause in the chorus, letting the space open up for a climbing bass run to play an additional layer of pleasantry. Strasser injects this one with plenty of personality in the vocal and piano melodies. Listeners feel like she’s talking to them as well as performing for them.
“Kisses Like Yours” could be Strasser’s breakout radio hit song. She lulls the listener in with warm affectionate piano lines that take their time welcoming you in. From there, she lets her vocals sweep wide during her chorus. Her personal reflections on a new relationship touch upon a universal experience with a unique twist.. Chris Trapper makes an outstanding backing vocalist here, finding musical chemistry with Strasser while keeping her winsome chorus fulsome, embraceable.
“Bittersweet” find Strasser shifting into her more serious, somber side. She sustains her vocal notes with thoughtful, tasteful infuses of feeling. Even without reading the lyrics a listener can tell something sad has transpired and she’s looking back on it wistfully. A listener can feel the value she sees in what has to be as she moves from something she equally valued. The expression of feeling is even more impressive than what she can do with her sophisticated vocal and piano techniques.
“Teresa” is blessed by Adrianna Pope’s violin melody. It glides sweetly, freely over the steady knob of piano chords to create a strong emotional backdrop for this song. Strasser, like a good storyteller, begins with a dramatic scene then continues her emotional journey into her mother-daughter relationship. A listener can appreciate the haunting beauty in this song’s musicianship as well as the lyrical theme it supports. Both threads just pull you right along until the bittersweet ending.
Strasser continues her moody sentiment on “Who Needs A Lover,” a darker contemplation on love lost. She sings this one closer to a piano jazz bar chanteuse, sustaining sultry vocal notes, tapping out forlorn piano notes. The listener can lose himself in the fulsome chorus, its wide, smooth vocal and persistent rhythmic underpinnings keeping one glued to the emotional drama and pleasant musical flourishes.
Ever the master singer-songwriter, Strasser jumps right into her Carol King influenced “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with flinty authority. She doesn’t let go of you for a second here. Knobby rhythmic work, assertive violin, and Dan McLoughlin’s organ swirls put a musical wedge of support beneath Strasser’s forceful chords. This one could’ve taken its place among “You’re So Vain” and “I Feel The Earth Move” if it had been written, recorded, and released back in the day. This is Strasser’s personal reflection on a romantic relationship’s more intimate moments. She belts it and taps it out with the assertive gravitas of an anthem. The hip, rocking stride takes no mess as it barrels force with the urgency of personal need.
“Dust” is Strasser’s quirky, moody singer-songwriter moment. The diverse songwriting and musical elements that the songwriter strings together become a massive wall of emotional honesty and drama. Haunting, floating vocal sustains over moody violin and sudden shifts in tempo and dynamics conjure the tension, suspense, and melodrama in a doomed relationship. The listener can feel Strasser’s attempt to find substance and meaning in something that could only be fleeting, ephemeral. Her man was and is a mystery to her, and that experience provides the grist for this work. There is much going on musically even as the song, on its surface, feels light.
Strasser closes out with “The Last Waltz,” her personal conversation song about a man that keeps her affections glowing, flowing, and strong. The piece is simply a young lady’s charming expression of a man who constantly charms her, even when he’s not trying to do. It close out her album on a light, friendly note and her melodica is as winsome as her chirpy spoken lines.
Strasser is certainly a singer-songwriter to keep an eye on. Her advanced insights, sophisticated techniques, and beautiful voice, buttressed by an innate ability to express and inspire emotion, will keep her in a spotlight for along time. Only time will tell if she finds a spotlight big enough to match her overwhelming talents.
