It is this question that charts the focus of Dalbello's new album entitled whore.
Dalbello steps out front once again on a poetic path that began with the critically acclaimed albums whomanfoursays (Capitol, 1984)
and She (Capitol, 1987), and points an intense light onto her new collection of work to reveal an intimate, unsparing and unapologetic
portrait of a sculpture named "whore".
Dalbello recalls, "Before I even began recording this album, I had written a poem called whore, which evolved into the pivotal song
that became the foundation for the album .....the song whore is about the loss of self; and about the loss of self-esteem. It's about trading
in your values.....selling out....in exchange for some kind of gain....whatever that may be--whether it's to be loved, to be accepted, to fit in,
to climb a ladder of success...but ultimately, it's about power and powerlessness: The moment you place your self-worth into the hands of
others, you devalue yourself...you prostitute yourself."
The first single eLeVeN, is a brilliant example of the poetic and melodic devices she employs to anoint your senses: the song begins by leading the listener down a calm river of sound guiding us through the first half of the song on an almost hypnotic journey; the atmosphere is eerily pin-cushioned by a high-pitched guitar tone that sounds like distorted radio noise emitting a signal of things to come.
She reflects, eLeVeN is about Time: about knowing how precious it is, how easy it is to throw away, and about how Time has the power to heal." The word 'eleven' is repeated like a Mantra and acts as a sort of measuring stick of Patience that's called upon to manage a level of calm whenever old memories or old angers begin to surface. Her trance-like vocals gauge her way through the song like mercury in a thermometer. She comments, "You know---when you sometimes feel like you're just about to reach the boiling point---you've heard that saying of when someone says they're gonna 'count to ten' in an attempt to cool themselves off?---well, I like to think of the number eleven as that extra degree of distance that the stretch of your Patience can extend to."
Dalbello produced the album whore with her engineer, Richard Benoit; she began recording three of the songs in L.A. where she moved to in 1990 to write and produce for other artists . She completed the rest of the album in Toronto, where she was born. An ardent disciple of pre-production, Dalbello wrote, arranged and pre-recorded all the songs, demoing them first in the studio in her home and writing on almost every track with her brother Stefano Dalbello, whom she sites as "an inspirational and unique collaborator and envisioneer". She spent her time alone, hacking on guitars, basses and vocals, and on "just about any orthodox and unorthodox noise generating device that the tracks summoned for."
When the actual recording of the album commenced, Dalbello chose to generate the core sound and rhythmic elements from her computer, while tracking the songs live from the studio floor. She recorded the basic tracks together with a group of colleagues ranging from Alain Johannes, guitarist of the L.A. based "riot grrrl" power trio Eleven, to Justin Clayton, guitarist for Julian Lennon & Roland Orzebal of Tears For Fears, and to the arresting Tommy Lee, monster drummer of Mötley Crüe.
The bleeding bass groove and gnarling guitars riffs enact a slaughter on all the funk arteries and sensibilities that would even leave Trent Reznor ravenous. From the opening track Heavy Boots, her voice exudes an irreverent undertone against a mocking wah-wah guitar that impeaches her thinly veiled good-intentions. Distorted clavinets and lacerating guitar and bass lines hammer away in Deep Dark Hole, while Dalbello sarcastically snaps her words out in machine-gun cadence.
If the song whore is the crucible of Dalbello's new album, then The Revenge Of Sleeping Beauty is its redemption. Brutally elegant,
the dark Middle Eastern epic begins with a caged-cautious and deliberate groove and errupts into a crunch of guitars and sitars;
Dalbello hisses and gnarls her way through the story of a woman who is in a deep sleep of Denial, as narrated by her darker
self...."They are two parts of the same person----conflicting emotions---yet conspiring together, to avoid taking responsibility for her own
actions or lack of action, pre-occupied with the blaming of others and too consumed with anger to be able to forgive herself and
Some of the album's bittersweet compositions will deceivingly wrap you up in a warm blanket, only to then envelop you in a ferocious fire of emotion, as if the lyrics' and music's anthemic rage were driven by demons. Dalbello's voice can be intoxicating and pure, and then instantly bruise and become switchblade sharp.....she lets you step into her skin and joy-ride the charted and uncharted emotional territories she has herself once navigated.
The artwork on the cover of Dalbello's album is haunting and provoking: a blood-red wall surrounds a pale alabaster-skinned half-person sculpted in her own image, her head and neck fastened with buttons onto her shoulders, her torso forever fixed onto a pedestal......a corroded bronze plaque with the name "whore" engraved into it---an exhibit in the museum of the past. The human eyes stare right back at us----almost into us---in all it's strange and unpolished beauty, imploring us to come closer----if you dare. "The sculpture on the album cover is there as a reminder of what you can become when you whore yourself: an immobilized half-person."
Dalbello posits wry autopsies of self-love/hate affairs and of the psyche's blurry line between shadow and light, where sometimes in the
end, the euphoric power of confession, impeachment and forgiveness can all collide, and like a blessed cocktail from the heavens, produce
the regenerative properties of healing.
Drastic Measures
Originally released under St-12140 on May 19, 1981
Features the singles "Never Get To Heaven" and "She Wants To Know"
Guest appearances by Ben Mink, Bob Segarini and Bob Esty
We have a limited number of new CDs in shrink wrap.
Catalog # ddm-100 CD $34.99
To Place an order, note Title and cat. #
select
 Security Enabled Browsers |  Non-Secure Browsers |
|---|
whomanfoursaysSecurity Enabled Browsers | Non-Secure Browsers |
|---|
Security Enabled Browsers | Non-Secure Browsers |
|---|
Security Enabled Browsers | Non-Secure Browsers |
|---|
\