Nashville-based Tywanna Jo Baskette arrives fully formed with an ambitious collection of songs almost too intimate for comfort. Like fellow Southerner Daniel Johnston, Baskette seems either unable or unwilling to shroud her intimacy in crafted metaphor, but remains enigmatic enough to inspire closer attention. Using local folk and country music alongside nursery rhymes as her starting point, Baskette's skewed, episodic storytelling portrays her nervous fragility, lending 'Fancy Blue' a sense of troubled poignancy. Producer and musician Clay Jones retains Baskette's offbeat timing and irregular phrasing, using minimal, breathing arrangements, while never overemphasizing for effect. It's a fine line between naivety and parody, and Baskette and Clay tread that line beautifully. 'Fancy Blue' is an extremely ambitious work, and it's not an easy album to confront in one single sitting. The album's nineteen disparate songs are tied together by Baskette's whispered, child-like croak and her charismatic presence, but they also display her broad musical scope and overwhelming capacities as a songwriter and performer.
Fancy Blue by Tywanna Jo Baskette is an acquired taste. The music and songwriting most of the time fine to good, but the problem is the vocal performance. The whispery vocals are something that can really get on your nerves. For a few songs it's ok, but after ten, it gets annoying (and the album has 19 tracks). Also, the album contains several acapella (or almost spoken word) songs and sketches of songs that are not nearly completed. All this makes the album sound very pretentious and the quality of the music is not good enough to justify it.
I want to be a supporter of anyone who does art of any form but some people just take the piss.
Ok, so I may be in a bad mood this morning.
I found the style annoying and I didn’t enjoy listening. But she has an album on the list and I don’t so who’s the real winner.
21 monthly listeners on Spotify, ~500 views on Youtube, literally no info on the artist or album anywhere on the Internet except for like two sites clearly not updated in the last 20 years. Alright you win the "most obscure album on the list" challenge.
We've had some ultra obscure stuff on here already, but this is the first one where I'm like 90% sure it has to be a submission from somebody directly related to the artist. Interested in the backstory.
Lo-fi folk. Very whispery vocals. Has a certain "Outsider artist" quality to it, vaguely reminiscent of like a female Daniel Johnston I guess. Even if it's not really all that musically interesting, the weirdness of everything surrounding this album and submission kind of elevate the vibes it's going for, if that makes sense. Makes me feel like I'm listening to something from a different dimension. 3/5 maybe? Hard to rate.
This is that specific style of singer-songwriter that can sometimes appeal to me, and can start to grate a bit at times. Today I was squarely in the middle. Not my favorite, and not a style I'm up for a full album full of today, but I did see a lot of the cleverness and at times very pleasant.
Wow a dive into musics very long tail. If they ever want to make “Marcel the Shell with shoes on - the musical” this kind of breathy childish but not childlike vocals would be good. Held my interest but not sure I’ll be going back
Odd, and not in an enjoyable way. Baskette’s craggly vocals did not appeal to me, and the threadbare instrumentals did nothing to help them. Kind of a surreal listening experience to be honest, felt at times like the songs you would hear emanating from a cursed child’s toy in a horror movie.
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