 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What can you say about Robin Renee's music? Well, for starters she's not a lot of anything, but rather a little bit of many styles all thrown together into a musical blender to produce something completely unique while still retaining the flavors of the individual ingredients. She was quoted in an article in New York Blade News as saying, "I've never purposefully copied anyone, but I've heard from people that the influence comes out in ways I don't realize." That same article went on to say that she "is influenced by singer-songwriters of the 70s and 80s, such as Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon and Elvis Costello." Take a listen to In Progress, her first full-length CD (released on her own label, Menage a Music,) and you notice from the first notes that she definitely knows how to get her rocks off a la Melissa Etheridge and there is gentle folk that might, at first, be mistaken for the Indigo Girls. There are deep pop grooves that make Dionne Farris come to mind, as well as lush vocals that evoke memories of Joan Armatrading. Her music is all of this and yet none of it at the same time. Perhaps the joyous diversity of her music is a reflection of Robin Renee the person. And what makes Robin Renee the person tick? Well, music obviously, that's always been there. Piano lessons were part of her childhood activities and she joined her first band at the tender age of ten and "toured" local elementary schools. While a student at Rutgers University she performed with what her press kit dubbed a "world-beat rock band" called Spy Gods. She became a fixture in the New York area scene as a solo performer and as front woman for a band called The Loved Ones. It is upon learning that she studied a variety of subjects, such as English literature, biochemistry, massage therapy and even Irish Gaelic, that one can begin to see the aforementioned diversity manifest itself in her life away from music. That said, the artist known as Robin Renee is also a published poet and essayist with The New York Quarterly, OUT/LOOK , Northeast Corridor being among the journals in which her work has appeared. She is also an activist serving as a regional organizer for BiNet USA and as a events planner for BiZone, an organization based in New Jersey which aims to support bisexuals and their friends. This Southern New Jersey native has also been a vegetarian for the better part of twenty years. All this and still not marketable? The Newark Star Ledger called her sound as having a "jangly, sometimes hard-driving folk-rock flavor that packs a subtle punch." Listening to In Progress, there is no denying the rampant energy that each song is imbued with. Ms. Renee and veteran producer Jayar, who is known for his work with Chaka Khan, George Benson and McFadden & Whitehead and, despite his R&B leanings, took the tracks on the album and made them shine like polished silver while preserving the songs' urgency and passion. The proof, as they say, lies in the songs and that should be enough, marketing campaigns be dammed. We are often put off by things which cannot be defined but this inability to be explained often gives these things a mystique, a certain power to captivate and stretch the imagination. They sometimes even give us a glimpse of our own potential, a potential that can only be reached if we expand the boundaries of our ideas and accept the risk that comes with altering out perspective. If this definition is true than the music of Robin Renee is gloriously undefined. Amen to that.
|
||||
Robin Renee, an
artist without a label.