REVIEW: Sister Soleil, Soularium (Universal)
- Sean Eric McGill
For years, I have heard bands in local clubs that have made me think 'Damn, if nothing good happens to these guys, that would be a shame'. Now I can add Sister Soleil to that same list after hearing their new album Soularium .
Lead by vocalist Stella Katsoudas, the music itself is an odd mixture of Sugarcubes-era Bjork, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, and about any other female artist of the past twenty years. The songs themselves are the usual mixed-bag fare of tracks about a love long lost, youth, etc. - but each has its own twist. Tracks like "Torch", "AOL" (yes, *that* AOL) and "Liar" are among the best on the album, and each has its own style and flavor, due in large part to her four-piece backing band, who seem to compliment her every vocal move with their music.
But what sets Sister Soleil and Soularium apart is Katsoudas. She wrote the songs, she produced the album, she sings with such raw emotion that her talent is impossible to ignore. And part of the appeal of her talent is that you can feel the urgency behind the music. This is what she was meant to do on this planet - anything else just wouldnt seem right.
My first paying job as a writer was as a sportswriter in the town I grew up in, a job I took after my own playing days had ended due to injury. For a mid-sized town, we had many players from different sports who you could describe using one word - phenom. That word kept occuring to me while listening to Soularium - phenom. It is used to describe someone who plays with pure natural talent, doing their job with what seems like the same effort the rest of us use for tasks like breathing. Stella Katsoudas has that type of talent, but instead of being able to take a round bat and connect with a round ball, sending it five hundred feet, she is able to write and perform music as though its what she was born to do.
Perhaps it is only appropriate that as I sit to write this review, I have just watched for what seems to be the one hundredth time the replay of Mark McGwire's sixty-second home run of the baseball season, making him the all-time single season home run champion. It's something I doubt that I will never tire of seeing, and I shall remember where I was when it happened until my final breath. And while Soularium may not have the same kind of long-lasting impact on me as McGwire's accomplishment, I have heard it dozens of times and haven't become even remotely tired of hearing it. People who have no interest in baseball have become enraptured by McGwire's chase and conquest of what many thought to be an impossible feat to accompish, and people who have merely a passing fancy in music should pick up Soularium. True talent is true talent, regardless of the way it is used.
