There’s a thin line, most spatial-emotional experts will agree, between love and hate. On her long-delayed second album (and first since heading from RCA to Warner Brothers), not-to-be-confused-with-Norah-Jones-or-Joss-Stone-or-Fiona-Apple songstress Rachael Yamagata doesn’t so much straddle the divide as alternately float above and thrash wildly about below it.
More
Elephants ... Teeth is essentially two EPs of wildly disparate atmospheres—the first a sprawling, epic and infinitely intimate follow-up to 2004’s Happenstance. As on its predecessor, measured keys and painstakingly crafted but deliberately muted turns of singer-songwriter phrase remain at the foreground. Awash in symphonic strings and whispered crooning simultaneously sensual and melancholy, Elephants comes to a head in the sweeping rise-and-fall of “Little Life,” a sneak-attack condemnation of living in the past. Though midpoint “Elephants Instrumental” (and four others) follow, soulful kiss-off “Sunday Afternoon” serves as a more effective transition to the condensed, unapologetically direct Teeth. Here Yamagata goes electric, railing against her transgressors with snarling guitars handed down from PJ Harvey and all the animalistic aggression the title implies.
Credit Saddle Creek label cornerstone Mike Mogis, who produced the majority of the songs, for emphasizing instrumentation and mood over vocal acrobatics. It may be a slightly muddled statement overall, but it nevertheless achieves the goal of separating the songstress from the piano-plinking pack.
Previous Discussion: