„Mariana Sadovska – Songs I Learned in the Ukraine (Global Village, 2001)
Just voice and harmonium. This album shows why she is probably my favorite singer, if the word “singer” means to become life force and amplify it, to capture life force straight from the heart and pour it out to the listener through the voice. The greatest voice, in my opinion. Mariana breathes so much life and beauty into her singing; she is beautiful, vulnerable, a mother, manic, fierce. She makes me tremble, weep, celebrate. I am awed and humbled by the terrible, incredible reality of life as a human heart and mind when I hear her. I am also soothed, made to feel sane, quenched. I was introduced to this record in the midst of terrifying existential dread from some unexpected deaths, which manifested as insomnia for a while. It was a shifting moment of brightness out of a nightmare to first hear this album. And whenever I feel tired or frozen/boring while I’m singing, I just think of Mariana’s singing and voila! I am revived. So now I’m telling you about some of my tricks, how I cheat …“
Sometimes I feel touched by the way musicians talk about special records, like a heart’s affair. This is an example. You can listen to one track of the album here, and it’s a great day for Spring Calling songs, isn’t it? Dawn McCarthy is telling this in a new edition of the series „Listed“ (Dusted Magazine). Very interesting, too, what she’s telling us there about a quite unknown Popol Vuh-album and an ECM-album called ROSENFOLE. Dawn McCarthy recently published an album with Will Oldham, a collection of carefully selected Everly Brothers-covers. M.E.
„Cycle of Spring Calling Songs …“