HI-N-DRY: Angeline

Angeline:
Powdered Pearls

Angeline is the edgy, haunting and emotionally charged “folk-rock” project of longtime Boston rockers Emily Grogan and Linda Viens. Both distinguished singer/songwriters with active solo careers, Emily and Linda began merging their voices and guitars in 2005 during their daughters’ playdates. The delight of singing, working together, and sharing “frontperson” responsibilities evolved into Angeline and the recording of their first record, “Powdered Pearls”, released on the legendary Americana/Morphine label, HI-N-DRY on March 23, 2007.

Recently described by the Noise as feeling like “’60s protest music delivered by a front wall of strong, focused, and beautiful women backed by a double whack of Boston music history on bass and drums, Angeline also includes vibes and violin to complete its uniquely beautiful sound”. The other members of Angeline are: Asa Brebner (bass, Asa Brebner Solo, Robin Lane And The Chartbusters, Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers, Idle Hands, The Family Jewels, Andrea Gillis), Cheryl Etu (vibes, Bitters,Chupacabra), Michael Guardabascio (drums, Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers), and Meredith Cooper (violin, Sarah Rabdau, Paula Kelly, Rick Berlin).

Press Clips and Reviews:

Angeline's Powdered Pearls feels like an arrival. As Linda Viens and Emily Grogan croon in the opening track, "Weathervane," it's as though the listener has "made it through the emptiness, the heartache and the loneliness" only to arrive at the pivotal moments depicted in the band's edgy mix of 1960s-influenced folk rock. Each track manages to convey a sense of knowledge and calm about these points of arrival, while tackling the hurt of lost love, painful memories, death and even revolution. Consequently, the album has the ability to capture those moments of pleasant self-evaluation, where suddenly everything seems to make sense. It's the album to put in when you're finally feeling like you can forget about your most recent heartbreak, and you're ready to move forward with the sound of the upbeat "Girl of Opportunity" in your ears.

Though Angeline's sound is that of folk rock, complete with banjo and harmonica, the two women grew up with punk influences that seem to be responsible for their edgy delivery. But Powdered Pearls hints toward a number of other influences as well. The meandering two-part harmonies of "The Clearing" bring to mind Chan Marshall's vocal work on You Are Free in their purposefully mismatched quality, the higher line featuring playful staccatos over the more sustained melody. The comparison ends there, however. The vocals are playful rather than ethereal, possessing a characteristic edgy confidence. Driven by the steady percussion and the playful use of the vibraphone, played by Cheryl Etu, "The Clearing" cheerfully describes waiting for promised letters that never arrive.

The album features many contrasting styles, indicating a wide range of musical experience. With its despondent vocal lines and the almost theatrical despair of the lyrics, the title track reveals a darker, almost chilling sound, with a mournful violin solo enhancing the other-worldly and grieving harmonies as Viens and Grogan repeat, over and over, "Everything dies, everything dies."

Powdered Pearls, in all its wisdom and clarity, is a successful first release from the two solo artists, and hopefully the beginning of a long-running collaboration.

--New England Performer

http://www.bmosworld.net/AngelinePowderedPearls.html

Sounding alternately like the soulful twin daughters of Sandy Denny or the northern cousins of Lucinda Williams, Emily Grogan and Linda Viens are Angeline. They are also two very talented singer songwriters with distinct voices and a stellar backing band featuring the legendary Asa Brebner. Grogan's solo record "iO" was one of my favorites from 2005. She has also performed with a number of local bands and performers, including Andrea Gillis. Viens is the lead singer of The Bad Saints. With a lyrical depth not often seen in modern day pop music, and an impressive emotional range, Angeline's "Powdered Pearls" is one of the finest collections of songs I've heard in a very, very long time. The arrangements are mostly simple, always in service to the words and the mood; and the musicianship is stellar without being intrusive. There is nothing I would change about this record, except to put it into the hands of every radio programming director in America. If this were 1975, Linda Viens and Emily Grogan would be mentioned in the same breath with Joni Mitchell and Carol King. They are that good. – Brian Mosher, BMO’s World, 2006

http://www.musicforamerica.org/node/114160

Good rock'n'roll is alive and well in 2007

Reviewer: John Book, Music For America

Angeline are a group from Boston headed by Emily Grogan and Linda Viens. They call this their "folk rock" project, but this is actually a rocking album for those who may be into Joni Mitchell, John Mellencamp, and Blues Traveler. The band are very rootsy, and it's nice to hear good rock'n'roll come off this way without ego, there's a spirit here that goes back to a much simpler time, and maybe that's the point. Powdered Pearls (Hi-N-Dry is an album that sounds like it comes from people who have a love for the music, and respect for the friendships within. The photos on the CD give off a family vibe, something you rarely see on a cover these days. They probably would do very well in festivals this summer, and each of these songs are worthy enough to be covered by the greats. One hopes someone with a bigger name will "discover" Angeline, put them on tour, and demonstrate that good rock'n'roll is alive and well in 2007.

http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid40660.aspx

Bad mothers: Angeline kick out the folk-rock jams

By BRETT MILANO May 29, 2007 12:05:58 PM

It’soften been said that inside every punk-rocker is a hippie scratching to get out. Fresh evidence has just arrived in the form of Angeline’s debut album, Powdered Pearls (Hi-N-Dry) — a contender for the prettiest folk-rock album ever made by people with Rat-era punk-rock roots. The two women who front this outfit (which comes to the Paradise Lounge on June 14), Linda Viens and Emily Grogan, are both well-regarded scene vets, and they make no bones about wanting to change the world.

“We may sound like hippies,” Grogan explains, “but we both grew up on punk rock; and we still have that kind of toughness in our music. We want to stand up and yell, ‘Fucking harmonize, world! Stop the disease and stop the dissonance.’ We have the same vision of what we want to spread: peace, love, and harmony, but in a warrior kind of way. We think that freedom is a great idea, and that living your own truth is a great idea, and we’ve written songs about the kind of changes we’d like to effect. So, yeah, that’s our message to the world: ‘Fucking love already, or we’re going to kick your ass.’ ”

Grogan built her profile with solo albums (the third, At Sea on One Way, was released at the same time as Angeline’s disc), and she also played sax in Andrea Gillis’s former band Red Chord. Viens has a Madonna-like musical pedigree with frequent changes of sound and image: she did spiky punk in the ’80s with the Children of Paradise, then sexy cabaret with Les Chanteuses Sorcieres, then went disco in the ’90s with the campy Crown Electric Company, and finally turned back to rock with the recently disbanded Bad Saints. Yet it was motherhood rather than music that brought the two women together. They met eight years ago, when each had a new-born daughter and was in need of another hip mom to hang out with.

“There weren’t a lot of rocking mothers out there,” Viens recalls. “Then I met Emily, and I said, ‘Aha! A beautiful, interesting, cool-looking mom — it’s time to be friends! We went real deep real fast. I’d say that Emily is cooler and more cerebral in a way — sharper-edged than me. She is real science-brained and I’m working more from the heart, so we complement each other pretty well.” Since the two were busy with their own music, they did some duo gigs strictly for fun. Enter Asa Brebner, who knew the makings of a band when he saw one. “I got to be the Svengali,” laughs Brebner, who’s well known as a solo artist and sometime Robin Lane & the Chartbusters member. He saw one of the Viens/Grogan duo gigs and started persuading them to form a full band around it. “You know how a really talented performer can still become monochromatic? They got their thing down and it may be great, but it can still be two-dimensional. Well, I think Linda and Emily keep each other from being that. They’re good friends, and they change what they’d normally do in the presence of each other. I was never a huge Simon & Garfunkel fan, but I think something similar happens with them — the harmonies lock in and it’s like one voice.”

Brebner took the pair to his home studio and produced some rehearsal sessions that wound up forming the majority of the album. He also joined them as bassist — which made Angeline the first band he’s played bass (rather than guitar) in since the late-’70s edition of the Modern Lovers. (Angeline’s current drummer, Michael Guardabascio, is also a long-time Jonathan Richman sideman.) The remaining members — violinist Meredith Cooper, vibraphonist Cheryl Etu, and pedal-steel player Steve Sadler — provide a wall of sound that moves Angeline away from the standard folk-rock realm, at times suggesting Brian Wilson’s brand of sound textures. “I thought it would be cool not to make it a guy band with guitars,” says Brebner. Adds Grogan, “I think the vibes and the violin give it a kind of otherness, an æthereal overhang to everything. It only happened during the recording that I heard it and said, ‘That’s it, the Angeline sound.’ ”

The loveliest songs on the CD — Viens’s title track and Grogan’s “Shadows” — also have the heaviest lyrics, so it’s easy to assume that the two friends prompted each other into deep thoughts on life and death. But it turns out that both think deeply without much prompting. “I’m still that rock girl I used to be,” says Viens, “but everybody’s got to grow up sometime. I want to go further and explore the way art can use beauty to teach something, or maybe lead you to the next level of awareness.” And Grogan? “I tend to be more emotional when I’m in a quiet room by myself. When we’re together, I’m more like, ‘Okay, the culture is fucked up. Now what can we do about it?’ ”

http://jimsullivanink.com/

Wed. June 20

A couple of years back, Linda Viens (right, in photo)and Emily Grogan (left)were playing their guitars while their kids played together. Viens had sung with Bad Saints, Boston Rock Opera and Crown Electric Company, among others, but had taken five years off. “Our brains clicked,” says Viens. “We have a similar edgy, rock quality. She edges me up and I soften her up; it’s a cool dance we do together.” Initially, just a side project, last year Viens and Grogan formed a sextet called Angeline, and went in the studio with producer (and their bassist) Asa Brebner. The result: The sometimes melancholic, sometimes upbeat, folk-rock CD “Powdered Pearls.”

They wrote separately, but shared vocals. “There’s something about singing harmony with another woman,” says Viens. “Something about the synergy of not carrying it all alone. I’d never shared front-person duties like that. On stage, I feel like I’m free-floating. I can get lost in my own emotional headspace and so can she. There’s a lot of sadness in this music, but when we play there’s an extremely joyful, funny, complex thing going on. A lot of pain, but we can’t stop being happy."

http://www.thenoise-boston.com/content/view/45/10/
ANGELINE
Hi-n-Dry
Powered Pearls
12-song CD

Emily Grogan and Linda Viens share the songwriting duties and sing lovely harmonies in Angeline. Passion is the key to this vibrant band with a country twinge. The lyrics are easy to follow—and are consistently delivered straight from the heart. Cheryl Etu adds a wonderful glow to “The Clearing” and a child-like feel in “And it’s Hard” where her vibraphone plays a dominant roll in the mix. “Happy Again” contains a lovely violin solo by Meredith Cooper. Angeline isn’t what I’d call a funny band, but the ending of “Girl of Opportunity” cracks me up every time I hear bassist Asa Brebner sing “I’m just a girl.” Billy Beard’s drumming adds the right color throughout, never overpowering the sensitivity of the songs. Most bands would be happy with one good songwriter and half the passion found here. With songs like “Weathervane,” “The Hardest Thing,” and “Powdered Pearls,” Angeline shares the gentle power and living wisdom of the massive knarly tree that sits in a field in Dover that found its way to the cover of this CD. Angeline is a Boston treasure to behold. (T Max) – the Noise, May 2007

http://www.thenoise-boston.com/content/view/44/10/
DENNIS BRENNAN, ANGELINE, PAVED COUNTRY
Lizard Lounge, Cambridge, MA 3/24/07

Just like one of their songs, I guess I’m a “Sentimental Old Fool,” but as a fan of Paved Country’s regular shows at the Plough & Stars in the past, I was delighted to see Sarah (Mendelsohn) and Marjie (Alonso) back on stage. They write great songs that play like scenes from a movie. You sing along with some, cry along with others, and dance a lot through all of them. The only thing sweeter than their vocal give, take, and shake is the sheer joy they share in performing. The all too short set hit songs from all three of their CDs but Norm Hartley (drums), Ed Riemer (bass) and Andy Pinkham (guitar) make them all sound smoky pub familiar. A newer addition to the band is Shaun Wolf Wortis whose guitar licks fit fine while his solos allow him to kidnap a song or three (and yet return them to their owners in a perfectly seamless manner). His guitar solo on the final number, “I Wish Our Love Was New,” is one of the highlights of the set. And just like my favorite Paved Country song, I’m already having “Too Much Fun.”

It’s the second night of the party that Angeline is throwing at the Lizard Lounge to celebrate the release of their new CD, Powdered Pearls. I’ve been waiting for product since I first heard them in Union Square a year or so ago and tonight I’ll finally get my grubby hands on something. The band is fronted by songwriters Emily Grogan and Linda Viens and loaded with talent. The wily veteran rhythm section has the legendary Asa Brebner on bass (!) and back-up vocals, with Michael Guardabascio on drums. Meredith Cooper’s guest violin is the star of my favorite song “Happy Again.” But the big surprise for me is what Cheryl Etu adds to the sound with her vibraphone—she drew rounds of praise from our bourbon-loaded table after any number of songs. It all comes back to the front women though, and Linda and Emily deliver in every way with songs like “The Clearing” and “Girl of Opportunity.” I love the ending of the latter song with Brebner following the two women in repeating the last phrase “I’m just a girl.”

Closing the show is the great Dennis Brennan and while I wish I could cite the lame excuse of a deadline, it’s the bourbon I’ve consumed that presses me toward calling it a night. Yet I’m stopped in my tracks by his opener. One great song leads to another and then to another as I try to get out the door. I finally pry myself free in order to get safely home but on the way, I marvel over the wealth of riches here in our local scene where folk like Dennis Brennan (and Asa Brebner and Shaun Wolf Wortis) can be so often taken for granted. You always think you can hear them some time when really you should hear them every time. (Al Janik)

Hi-N-Dry

Angeline: Powdered Pearls

Press Clips and Reviews:

Bad mothers: Angeline kick out the folk-rock jams

Angeline:
Powdered Pearls