Mary Scholz
 |
| The Girl You Thought You Knew: a romance propelled by angelic voice and heart piercing lyrics. |
Her new album, The Girl You Thought You Knew has the same effect. It's a star-filled Milky Way of music that tightens your stomach, speeds your pulse and captures your heart. The fifteen songs on this album are each crafted and polished and presented as a love offering in a carefully sequenced order that defines her heart and pierces yours. This is not an album to play on shuffle; it is a romance ready to ripen.
Beginning with "A Mournful Noise", the anguished cry of loss and heartbreak that evokes an image of a siren standing on a hill crying for a lost lover, then shifting to her hit single, the country - twanged "The Bridges We Burn" Mary sets the stage with lines, "Can I leave/Can I let it go/Can I just walk away from the life we have built. You are forewarned; this is an emotional journey like no other. The pace picks up with a blues - rock tempo title song The Girl You Thought You Knew that unreels the story, pushing your love away with the lyrics, "I'm Sorry baby, but I tried/Sorry for telling you all those lies". This girl has been places, not all of them god, and you alternately want to take her in your arms and comfort her and scream back at her in anger.
The album was released in February, but I waited until now to review it so I could see her live and talk with her. I am glad I did, because it gave me her backstory and a glimpse of her personal power.
For me, two songs on the album close the deal: In My Bed spills out a woman's needs - complex, erotic, urgent but romantic. She sings directly to me, the listener, "I want to feel you inside/I want to know its just inside of my mind/pull me closer to you baby". Man, woman, young, old - it doesn't matter, you want to pull her close, to feel that soft crystalline voice inside you.
But elsewhere in the album, she tells you that you can't feel her inside because she is "Someone Else's Wife", to my mind the most powerful song on the album. Drawn from her young marriage and divorce, "Someone Else's Wife" pulls you close to her heart, but near her body. The conflict that love can bring is laid out bare before you with the catch of tars in her voice. For those who have been there, it surfaces feelings long ago buried; for those who have not, it is a vicarious experience both sweet and bitter.
The love and anger and ache that builds up through the album - a chronicle of the love, anger and ache that we have all felt as we have fallen in and out of love - melts away in this song as she gives you a window into the heart of a young woman's dilemma, a window so clear even a man can see the feeling on the other side.
Mary Scholz's album The Girl You Thought You Knew is a romance of powerful feeling - regret, sadness, love, sex, independence and strength - all delivered in an angelic voice and heartrending lyrics. Listen to it all the way through and you will fall in love. I did. Available HERE
To hear and learn more about Mary Scholz go to:
Web
Mary Scholz Music
facebook.com/maryscholzmusic
 |
| L.A. Correspondent Patrick O'Heffernan |
Comments