Notes on Love by Petra Jean Phillipson is NOT for AIRHEADS. She cannot be viewed as an aspiring pop idol. This would totally underestimate her creativity and accomplishment as an artist and performer. Records this honest and affecting are rare, but records which ensnare you from the start and leave you craving more, as this one does, are rarer still. Make no mistake NOTES ON LOVE is a dark and bewitching album from a major new British talent.
Notes on Love. Is this 33 year olds debut solo album. This accomplished work is a natural development for Petra Jean Phillipson, who, as a strong contemporary singer/songwriter has cut her teeth with the likes of David Holmes, The Beta Band, and Marianne Faithful. Shes paid her dues live and ridden the Camden circuit time and again. No stage school preening for this woman.
She purrs like Billie Holiday back from the grave. NME
Each track has been scored purely to evoke the haunting emotion of her lyrics. Without clich�s or unnecessary padding she explores the nature of love.
Quote Be near silence sings to me been lone too long without a tiny glimpse of he
You get the idea things havent always gone her way. She makes you wanna cry, she makes you wanna sing. Her expression in the recordings, are simple sparse and very beautiful. UNCUT MAGAZINE****
Being pulled from pillar to post as a child, she never felt as though she belonged anywhere but she finds stillness within music. A moving home of sorts: wherever her body takes her, her mind follows, chews round what she sees, then spits out an idea in a song. Australia, Bath, New York, LA, France have not failed her completely. Now she rests in between France & London.
Rumour has it she spent 8 years making this record. True. In her obsessive perfectionist way she has worked, reworked and pushed the sounds to the edge only to find herself. She has swapped studios and producers like they were soiled underwear. Discarding a so thought final version of the record made with Head & Rob Ellis. So Shes played and replayed everything until she was satisfied. Momentarily. When asked why the album took so long she replies, it never had the weight I was looking for. Now it has.
Needless to say Petra Jean Phillipson recorded, co produced & mixed the record, alongside Simon Tongs sultry guitar licks and Paul May ticklings on the drums. She also created the artwork, costumes and collaborated with James Griffiths on the video. She suggests if she doesnt get her ideas out of her head, something uncomfortable happens to her?
What I wanted the music to reflect was a hybrid of blues, rock, alternative country, jazz & a little punk rock middle finger intimacy.
She confesses adoration for: Karen Dalton, Cat Power, Howie Gelb, , Hildegard Von Bingen ,Bjork, Nick Cave, Calexico, Mathew Barney, Pattie Smith, The be good Tanyas, Vaughan Williams, Bill Evans and Aretha Franklin to name a few.
The rawness of her lyrics gives full range to her extraordinary singing ability, which, as she puts it, is an attempt at something honest. She is definitely a thinking persons artist with far too much street credibility with her strong jazz blues roots to be relegated to background music at dinner parties.
The last thing I want is this record to be ineffective. I want to pull people all over the place emotionally.
Bursting with ideas, Petra Jean Phillipson is working on her next album as she recovers from her European tour. Downtime consists of scoring the music for and acting in an independent Sci-Fi film, collating photographs for a personal show, and producing the debut LP for Simon Tong (her long time collaborator & Gorillaz guitarist). As she gathers her new material she plays in a local club accompanied only by her pallor guitar to silence the non-listeners.
She wrings time for her thoughts and extracts droplets; these moisten our tongues in the DARK shadow of our times.
MAKE NO MISTAKE SHE MEANS EVERY WORD
petrajean.com
