By Michelle Broder Van Dyke
The setting: Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a young American, and Céline (Julie Delpy), a young French woman, have just met on a train. The duo disembark in Vienna, where they spend the day discussing life and love and getting to know each other. In this scene they are in a record store filled floor to ceiling with vinyl.
Jesse: This place is pretty neat.
Céline: There is even a listening booth. (Céline pulls out a record embellished with a black-and-white profile. The name spread across the top is indiscernible in the distance.) Have you ever heard of this singer?
Jesse: No.
Céline: I think she’s American, a friend of mine told me about her.
Jesse: Do you want to go, and see if the listening booth still works?
The two seal themselves in the listening booth. The needle is placed on the record, and then Kath Bloom’s voice creeps in - fittingly with Jesse’s awkward, flirtatious glace: “No, I'm not impossible to touch / I have never wanted you so much.”
The backstory: born to a famous oboist, Kath Bloom was classically trained as a cellist, but as a rebellious teen she taught herself the guitar in the local graveyard where she eventually became employed. Since the mid-'70s Bloom has been recording avant-garde, minimally distributed collaborations - some of which were recently reissued - that were put on hiatus to raise her kids in New Haven, Conn. When “Come Here” was showcased in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), an existentialist’s quintessential romantic-comedy, a resurgence of interest in Bloom occurred, one that is often compared to Vashti Bunyan’s.
More recently: her first release since 1984, Finally (Chapter, 2006), opens with the fragile, yet slightly erotic “Come Here” - an easy choice due to its popularity. But because it has always captured a slight slice of cheese for me - much like Before Sunrise does, despite its sweet sincerity; the cynic in me has never been able to buy into the ambiguously happy ending - the choice had me worried that the rest of the album might fizzle into mediocre mush.
Instead the followup track, “It’s Just a Dream,” finds Bloom's crystalline voice immediately pricking and penetrating with the lyrics “the whole world is for sale / everything is going stale / I’m going to run / I won’t turn back.” The words reveal an honest disposition that can’t balance what-the-world-is with a '60s dream of what-the-world-would-become.
Warbling, oft-off-key vocals - like lithe honey - plus charming guitar picking and homey harmonica permeate Finally and Bloom's next full-length, Terror (Chapter, 2008) - although the latter adds a bigger backing band. Bloom personifies the wind, laments the war and materialism, and poetically sings of family life and mortality, capturing simultaneously warmth and despair.
Right now: Bloom’s music, with her harmonic and acoustic guitar backed by band Love at Work, which includes longtime collaborator Tom Hanford and husband Stan Bronski, is meant for an intimate setting. Bloom will finish up her first West Coast tour at Café Du Nord on March 8.
What’s next: watch out for a Bloom tribute, Loving Takes This Course (Chapter Music). The recording comprises one disc of covers by adorning fans such as Devendra Banhart, Mark Kozelek, and the Concretes and one disc of Bloom's original versions - so that you can immediately judge the imitations. It's scheduled to be released on April 7.
KATH BLOOM
With Little Wings and Be Gulls
3/8, 8 p.m., $13
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
digg •
del.icio.us •
sphere •
google
•
