ARTWORK
PORTRAITS : ACRYLIC & PENCIL
Slow to Burn Review by Stanton Swihart, ALLMUSIC.com
“Vanessa Daou moves somewhat away from the intense eroticism of Zipless on her second album, but it is a no less seductive or steamily crepuscular effort. Each of Slow to Burn's 11 songs pays homage to an influential female artisan, from musicians (Billie Holiday) to artists and poets (Gertrude Stein, Frida Kahlo) to actresses and dancers (Greta Garbo, Josephine Baker), whose life exemplifies complete liberation, artistic or otherwise. Peter Daou's music again grooves with a jazz edge -- keyboards and cymbals abound, with warm, creamy basslines and dance rhythms that are unusually suggestive rather than rampant -- but also moves from brooding to meditative, often within the same song. Rather than dancefloor fodder, the music seems as if it would be more at home in an after-hours club where movement is a narcotized haze. Peter Daou's playing and arrangements are impeccable and precise but can also have a haunting quality. In addition to the pervasive jazz influence, elements of gospel, R&B, dance, electronica, and even slight hints of Latin music enter the songs. "Evening" is like a long, slow drag on a cigarette, sexy and gorgeous with the underlying sense of hazard that is likely to be regretted the next morning, and many of the other songs share that sensuality. Vanessa Daou's lyrics alternate between longing, beguiling, and introspective. They are not always exactly poetry, but they are usually compelling and, married with Peter Daou's voice, it is enough to bring the music to full life. Her smoky whisper is vulnerability itself, pure late-night allure that is chilling because it acts as a spectral knife-edge, both empowering and dangerous. Her vocals are down in the mix, treated with echo, and some of her vocal phrasing (though not the vocals themselves) is reminiscent of Sade. And like Sade, Vanessa Daou has an icy veneer to her voice without ever coming off as frigid or overly calculated. In fact, it has just the opposite quality. Her singing is a gauzy, windswept curtain in the dark, and it equally draws you curiously closer to it and sends an eerie tingle through you because of what might be behind it. There is a reason that Slow to Burn is perfect post-midnight music. It is a subtle jolt of electricity that illuminates the blue darkness and makes all the shadows sparkle.”
CHAPBOOK FOR LIGHT, SWEET, CRUDE : 16 pages
VANESSA DAOU: LIGHT SWEET CRUDE (ACT 1: HYBRID)
By Imran Khan / 28 February 2014
“Vanessa Daou’s newest batch of material (her seventh solo release) finds the singer in much higher spirits after the contemplative, lugubrious jazz of 2008’s Joe Sent Me. Light Sweet Crude (Act 1: Hybrid) has the singer leaving the safe, comfortable confines of the bedroom for the thrill of the nightclub once again, a welcome return to her dance music days that offered such hits like “Near the Black Forest” and “Two to Tango”, songs which became anthems for the late-night crowds. Daou has often professed her admiration for Françoise Hardy, citing the French pop singer as an influence that has strongly informed her work in the years throughout. But Daou’s spicily romantic flirtations with pop lean a lot closer to Jane Birkin’s heavy-breathing blues, the erotic pulse of risqué refrains being one of the many threads that bind these two in the sometimes playful and divisive realms of popular music.
Like Birkin, Daou has made a career on exploiting the taboos of sexual desire. But where Birkin’s music has often employed a humour both ribald and daring (thanks to her co-conspirator and songwriter, Serge Gainsbourg), Daou aims for something more serious. The politically-minded Light Sweet Crude, written during the times of the Arab spring and Occupy movements, seeks to marry the practices of sexual discourse with the anxieties of political strife consuming every corner of the world. “Break Me”, an eerie, ominous death-march of programmed military-snares, could either be the sordid account of a disturbed woman’s desire to be ravished or a chilling narrative of a deadly revolutionary stalking his intended victim. This double-narrative also finds its way into numbers like “Trouble Comes”, a slippery groove heralding the sense of oncoming danger in both a romantic liaison and a street riot. In “Love is War”, the singer equates the trials of divorce with war.” Read full featured review at PopMatters
CHAPBOOKS
BEAUTIFUL BEASTS : BLIND CONTOUR DRAWINGS (Ink on paper)
PERFORMANCE : ONE-WOMAN-SHOW
IN THE WINGS: performance in the form of a spoken poem, exploring the poetics of memory, using the structure of Haiku, elements of rhythm, gesture, and melody. A journey of grace, disgrace, and self-embrace.
This one-woman-show includes 60 minute set is designed as a portable experience, to be given in lecture halls, small theaters, classrooms, salons, bookstores, galleries, and anyplace a cat can
In venues across New York City, follow @vanessadaou on Instagram for updates.
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SELECTED PORTRAITS : ACRYLIC & PENCIL (Vincent Van Gogh, Paris Hilton, Kahari Mays, Marilyn Monroe)
MURAL WORK : FROM ALICE IN WONDERLAND, COMMISSIONED FOR WALLS AT ALICE’S TEA CUP, New York, NY
