After a few years of touring nationally and internationally, building their following one brick at a time, Laura Cortese & The Dance Clubs have released their debut album California Calling. Cortese and her Dance Cards take musical forms like folk and Celtic and reinvent them into something fresh, original while occasionally grafting them onto pop music idioms. This album finds them off to a strong start as inventors of their own music.
“The Low Hum” opens the disc with a nimble banjo line making everything feel rustic and homey. Sustains in Cortese’s voice and fiddle give this a light, airy, dreamlike quality. Cortese’s vocal timbre makes it a beautiful piece as it pushes forward alongside that banjo, a banjo that sounds so darn good in the backdrop that you just can’t help but focus on it. The movements in this tune are subtle but persistent and the listener cannot help but feel pulled along in its pleasant stream.
Title track “California Calling” has a rambling feel, thanks to a briskly bowed cello. That knobby traveling feeling gets another brisk motion from Cortese’s picked fiddle strings. Her girlish vocal purrs over that, a lovely whisper. Her Dance Card mates jump in with harmony vocals, turning this into a fun, lush call to a warmer place.
“Three Little Words” finds Cortese unleashing one of her grittier fiddle lines. She bows a hefty, Celtic influenced line that suggests there is a lot of history behind her song. Her full, lush vocal rides the range of her song well, an instrument in its own right that contributes much to the arc of this piece. Jenna Moynihan’s banjo keeps its rustic while Sam Kassirer plays a haunted piano in the backdrop. This deep, emotive piece moves with the force of the wind.
“Skipping Stone” reflects on lost love, conjuring that forlorn emotion with a chorus of coos and a down tempo, picked fiddle line. This lonely walk is brought to wide, three dimensional life by Cortese’s unique timbre and the way she switches from vocal assertions to moody sustains. It’s a mournfully beautiful song that captures the beauty of what’s been lost by expressing the sorrow of losing it.
“Hold On” feels more like pop rock. Its percussion, claps, and call and response chorus is as old school pop as it gets on songs carried by fiddles and cello. Cooing around the lead vocal reminds of doowop. Cortese’s coolly measured, breathy vocal recalls those singers of oldies girl groups. This song could be placed on local rock radio stations, and listeners might not even notice at their first few listens that this is being played on acoustic instruments. It rocks right out toward the middle, picked fiddle notes ushering in a feeling of urgency as the knobbier notes from other instruments snowball into a huger threat.
Cortese and her band mates tackle the traditional fiddle tune “Swing & Turn (Jubilee).” Cortese’s adorable vocal finesses these old time lyrics about the good life in the country in days gone by. Fiddles make an upward swinging motion and a lilting melody at once. A moody cello chimes in with its deeply expressed churn. It all comes together here as one jubilant expression of a party one wouldn’t want to miss, back in the day.
“Rhododendron” is Cortese’s ode to a favored flower and she shows great respect with a wide, lush vocal surrounded by equally beautiful backing vocals. This lofty sound is party angelic and part artistic. Sam Kassirer’s subtle synth work lends this a light underpinning that keeps the whole thing afloat.
“Someday” is a lilting, Celtic influenced pop ditty. Cortese finesses her vocal line through a maze of fiddle and cello. She throws her voice out like a lasso, sending her catchy, one word chorus across the landscape of sweet acoustic notes before calling it back. One can feel the historic influence and feeling of Celtic music while enjoying the catchy trick Cortese plays with her voice. This is another tune that could go to radio.
Cortese and her Dance Card members have toured, together and individually, all over the world. One of their stops included “Stockholm,” an interesting country with a fetching landscape that intrigues them greatly. This ode to “Stockholm” has a thick sound with a hint of eerie edge. Cortese’s lush vocal moves in a lilting grace as percussion instruments snap and acoustic instruments gallop forth. Upright bass player Natalie Bohrn plucks a forceful, stomping motion, a power that everything in this piece can land and take off from. The elements in this song all come together in a tuft of toe tapping fun.
The synth and marimba flavored “Pace Myself” is another potential radio hit for this outfit. Percussion and electronic enhancement create a catchy, snappy groove. Cortese’s vocal has more of an adult allure here as she moves through it all with a gently push. Modern rock radio could easily find a slot for this cleverly contrived number. It’s got “alternative” written all over it.
Cortese and her Dance Cards close out with “If You Can Hear Me Now,” a whispery soft song that pits Cortese’s sweet vocal against nimbly played marimba, adeptly tinkled piano notes, and picked fiddle notes. This highlights the sweeping appeal of each sides of this song, making it a treat for years.
Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards are coming into their own as a recording and touring act. With more albums like this, LC&TDC will be hard to find in the local greater-Boston/New England venues because they will be in demand all over the world.
