Fancie

I heard Elisabeth for the first time when she graced the stage at Kaitlyn's CD release party as a backup vocalist. She had a nice voice.

Kaitlyn later told me that she wrote music and sang in a Latin Church Choir. Elisabeth and I met later and she gave me a demo tape. The production values of the tape weren't great, but she was nice and her voice was unique and the music showed promise. We agreed to work on a project.

It surprised me, when we started recording, that she often prefered to use her lower register for her music, given she was a trained soprano. She has a Polly Jean Harvey-esque range that she used to deliver lines dripping with wry humor, sexual politics and uncanny imagery. As her forthcoming album unfolded in front of me track by track in the studio, I began to hear and understand the complexity with which she writes. An adept finger-picker with a penchant for obscure tunings and melodies, her songs presented themself as unique pieces of origami: delicate, complex and fascinatingly clever.

The sessions proved to give me moments of awe, as well as moments where I would cringe with fear. Elisabeth is a consumate perfectionist. She would listen to her vocal takes, observing them with excruciating detail.. We would do them over and over again until exhausted. Small technical problems in the recordings glared out at her and her mantra became, "I'm not satisfied with this."

Nevertheless, we managed to get through it and bring to light a collection of torch songs tinged with ennui, and gilded with emotion.