TYGERLAND

This is written to let you know that Cary Grace has a new challenging album at the start in 2015. 'Tygerland' undoubtedly lives from diverse influences. The production is verifying that we are dealing with a rather experimental musician and composer. While coming from a singer/songwriter home base, Cary always tries to reach for new horizons. This includes obvious guitar skills and a lovely singing voice on one hand, but there's also a proven passion to state for all sorts of vintage synthesizer stuff as well as for the liaison with other like-minded musicians.

Maybe exemplary for her approach is the collaboration with the US avant space rock band F/I some time ago. Stylistically the new album delivers a lot of rock music variation, even incorporating popular or trip hop hints ... and spaced out cosmic elaborations of course. So much for the global musical boundaries you're looking forward to. With Steffe Sharpstrings (Gong, Here & Now, Sentient) she has found a new congenial colleague concerning most of the recordings - true to form he impresses with his inspired space guitar and synth appearance.

Besides some additional supporters, who have an effect here, longtime studio compagnions Andy Budge (bass) and David Payne on drums are involved again. John Garden, who formerly has worked for Alison Moyet amongst others, is also aboard surprisingly on keyboards and guitars. Well, the opening title track may irritate a bit due to its totally spaced out behaviour - in any case you can immediately recognize that Steffe has a horse in the race here.

Cary is taking a wander through different stages afterwards, for example the straightforward Cyanide or the more trip hop flavoured Orange Sky which turns the album into another direction. The first highlight follows with War Child while including some US west coast rooted influence, a bit Jefferson Airplane alike. Into The Indigo shows some country flavour, where the nice pop rock related Limelight features fantastic electric piano and guitar attendance.

And then the grand finale - the extended Windsong - something magical per se! Cary once promised that I would like that especially ... and yes, she will enter Madmoiselle Marquee's footsteps a bit, the hallucinating flow paired with her ethereal voice is offering us something like a new myth. Although it starts a tad gloomy, creepy, the band is providing a wonderful meandering atmosphere afterwards. I bet it's Steffe's bow which slides with so much intuition, and/or the guitar synth is responsible for some remarkable effect.

The band turns into a magnificent slow tempo space groove after some time, the main theme comes repetitive, just mantra like. Captivating, the song is a masterpiece due to its uniqueness. So this yet again is a Cary Grace album I'm totally satisfied with. It's shaping up so well, I particularly mean the collaboration with Steffe and her diversified vocal respectively recitative expression. Hopefully there will come more of this in the near future. Official release date is 13 July 2015, but you already can stream some album excerpts on her bandcamp page. It's worth it!

Share this CARY GRACE review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to Rivertree
• Report this review (#1430138)
• Buy CARY GRACE music online with PA partners
• Show all CARY GRACE MP3/Stream
• Go to CARY GRACE page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Tygerland page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for CARY GRACE related discussions