Long gone are the days of “Holyday Motel”, Marisa Anderson’s first album, where she took small steps into the guitar world. Still a little embarrassed, she sang. There was a deep country feeling throughout the album, and it would be hard to guess the path that would follow, especially in the next decade, after “The Golden Hour”. His register changed, he abandoned the idea of country song and gave himself to the duty of the guitar, mixing tradition with contemporary composition, exploring what there is of noise in blues – and vice versa – and duties of minimalism in jazz. In the last decade, she has become a reference in guitar performance. Hearing her in the wake of other greats, be it John Fahey, Robbie Basho, or Jack Rose, Marisa Anderson has created new narratives to understand the presence of the instrument in American history.
Her coming to ZDB brings a new album, “Still, Here”, a return to solo recordings, in the house that has hosted her last works, Thrill Jockey. It’s the fourth album in five years, the first solo since the much praised “Cloud Corner” (2018), and the collaborations with Jim White (“The Quickening”, 2020) and William Tyler (“Lost Futures”, 2021). Without neglecting tradition, in these last records, Marisa Anderson has consolidated the search for other elements, through the use of electronics, experimenting with drone and letting herself go for more contemporary phrases, close to a Steffen Basho-Junghans.
About two years ago we met Chica with her “Play with the Dog”, that hymn to all kinds of precariousness that young adults – and not only – face nowadays. This year, she released her first EP, on which she has worked for the last two years, between Minho and Lisbon. “Cada Qual no seu Buraco” (produced by Luís Severo) adds more songs to the acidity of “Brinca com o Cão”, with a very direct pop singularity. Chica turns folk into jazz and can sing with a disenchanted lightness that is very much her own. Opportunity to sing with her songs that speak a generation. AS