MP3 Review: Catherine Hershey "lci le coeur - mostla tape" (STRN)

[€7 for CD-r // Name Your Price Download // http://souterraine.biz/album/ici-le-coeur-mostla-tape]

These songs are sung in a language that is not English and as this is from Paris I'm guessing it is French (Also based on the titles and all)   What's kind of fun though is that these songs, which are also short in length, are pretty much just vocal harmonies.    There are very few- if any- other sounds coming out aside from the layering of vocals.   Now this can become somewhat tricky because there are a number of rather well known artists who have that vocal quality where they make all of these noises with their mouths in place of instruments but this is more of an a cappella sound as it is purely voice and not trying to be anything else.

Though words like "beautiful" get overused by a lot of people this is just that- an effort of pure beauty.   The harmonizing is just something you have to hear to believe.   In ways, the vocals can resemble those of Polly Scattergood (I will always go to her) and even Kimbra, but then that must leave you thinking about hearing either of them without accompanying instruments and that's not the case.   These vocals do not need any instruments.

You know how people will listen to instrumental music and wonder if it is going to eventually get vocals or not, or maybe they feel like the songs *need* vocals even?   In those cases, the instruments tend to do the talking for them and they don't need vocals despite what anyone might think.    This is the inverse of that simply because these vocals are so big, so powerful and just so full that I could not possibly imagine adding instruments to them to enhance the sound in anyway.   It would simply be too much as this is perfect the way that it is.

Additionally, my now almost three year old son has enjoyed singing along with these songs even though he doesn't know French (as far as I know; he has watched some Pim DVDs so who knows)    This is just one of those things that when you try to explain it you might not be entirely convinced but at least stream the first song and you'll fall instantly in love as I did.