The Artful Binge

Experiments, Arts and Eats for the Utterly Insatiable

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Still buzzing from New Years optimism. Here's a sunny, apropros cover in honor of that, courtesy of Eric from Fruit Bats, and Andy from Vetiver. Bobby Charles! 

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It's gonna be a big year at The Artful Binge. Y'all ready? <3

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Early Fruit Bats incarnation. Kinda like the Brady Bunch, except made up of a bunch of #folkiebeardeddudes. 

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Visit Original Link

Born in the 70s / Fruit Bats

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This is one of those classic soundtrack-of-my-life songs (despite, you know, being born in '83). 

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Eric D. Johnson of The Fruit Bats. Y'all ready for some good old fashioned trippy folk-pop 'round these parts? Good, 'cause it's time. #folkybeardeddudes

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Baby I'm a Fool

Since we (Atha and Jacq) transitioned from coworkers to binge buddies over a shared love of Melody Gardot, and since back in the day Jacq taught Atha how to play this particular tune on the guitar (sniffle!), we figured it was only fitting that our M.Gardot-inspired binge project be the song that started it all. 

This number features Atha Fong on lead vocals, rhythm guitar and bass. She also gets credit for the song's chillaxed swing arrangement. Also, if you look closely, you can see that Atha is literally snapping in the track photo (a candid - seriously!). 

Jacqueline Van Meter is on doowop backup vocals, lead guitar, and tambourine.

Booyah! 

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Fusion Friday with Melody Gardot

After Melody Gardot won our hearts and guts with My One and Only Thrill, an album that - wine in hand - I diva-ed (and occasionally teared up) to nightly in my kitchen for a solid 8 months, she waited three full years before putting out another record.

Three full years.

Granted, that's not, say, Fiona Apple status, but it's a damned long time when you're awaiting the soundtrack to the meal-making you do 5 nights a week while romanticizing the size of your junior 1-bedroom apartment kitchen and fancying yourself a grownup (and a slightly mysterious one at that).

She reemerged in spring of 2012 with a highly anticipated album that, from the packaging and publicity photos to the fusion of all sorts of diverse but characteristically hushed sounds, seemed to speak directly to everyone's questions: where've you been? what have you been doing?  The answer: Around the entire globe, collecting experiences - the rich, exotic kind. 

Her third record, entitled The Absence, is heavily influenced by the 2 years she spent traveling around Europe, particularly Portugal, and by the year she lived in Brazil, birthplace of the bossa and samba styles that had been increasingly surfacing in her work. You could probably get away with calling her travels to Rio a pilgrimage. She describes the development this way: 

The time away, the time traveled, the time spent away from the people I love..."The Absence" is my departure from the stage momentarily, to go and write. I remember fighting for that. I needed to leave and go live.  

Three years of living, exploration and self-discovery yielded an album that is as intoxicating as it is tender: a joyful, eclectic, and a pitch-perfect articulation of how she's matured as an artist. Melody weaves her signature subtlety and phrasing into the rhythms of the fado, samba, tango and even Moroccan beats she encountered on her journeys, and the combination, as The Telegraph aptly put it in its review of the record, "plays like a late-night, gypsy travelogue."

And so, as we close on the Melody Gardot series here at The Artful Binge, we give you three samples off of her latest offering that illustrate the varied but delightfully cohesive flavors of The Absence:

Some Portuguese stylings in one of our faves, Lisboa:

A mournful tango, Buenos Aires-style, in Impossible Love:

An easy African groove, in Amalia:

And because we can't resist - and because Melody is a dish best served LIVE - set your eyes on her unbelievable performance of the album's best tune (and first single), Mira, here on the Jools Holland show. Sufficed to say, album #4 can't come soon enough. And from the look at the grins and grooves of the other guys on stage, I think everyone agrees on that. Swoon. 

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Melody bohemia. Vanity Fair, Italy 2012 #stilllovinthattat

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A little holiday cheer from our girl, Melody Gardot. #supersexyholidayjazzgoddess

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Amazing song, joyful video. A RAD way to kick off the 3rd and long-awaited album from Miss M. Gardot. 

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Strings and Sambas, with Melody Gardot

Atha and I have seen Melody Gardot in concert twice: once at the Fillmore, once at the Herbst, both in San Francisco. Both times, the venue staff almost literally had to peel us off the floor at the end of the show. As a binger of seriousness, I try to avoid hyperbole, but in the case of Melody Gardot, there's really only one word that accurately describes her phrasing, her performances, her effect on audiences:

Devastating. The woman actually makes you ache and gasp for 90 minutes straight. 

I'd wager this all began somewhere around her second album, My One and Only Thrill. MG made several very significant stylistic departures from her debut record that have continued to propel her work. 

1. She introduced string arrangements that, courtesy of renowned composer and arranger Vince Mendoza, paint many of the songs with a poignant, velvety glaze. She's been experimenting with string accompaniment ever since. They first appeared in their thickest incarnation in My One and Only Thrill's first single, Baby I'm a Fool:

2. While the acoustic guitar parts we heard on Worrisome Heart are still present, she makes a grand return to her primary instrument, and dark, slinky jazz piano arrangements are featured front and center in many of her best songs. Exemplifying this is the album's third single, Your Heart is as Black as Night:

3. Her vocals gained a spacey, breathy raspiness that's injected her music with an immediate, even visceral feeling of heartbreak. Here's one that might be Atha's and my favorite song to sing along to, diva style -  Lover Undercover:

4. Hints of the Brazilian musical styles she gravitated towards during her recovery begin to surface on her own stuff, adding a layer of super-subtle, hip-shaking samba to her low-key jazz aesthetic. It's sassy, worldly, and awesome. Here's the fan favorite in that regard, If the Stars Were Mine: 

The sum effect of these shifts is a collection of songs that simmer on the stereo and smolder on stage. In her live performances, Gardot's reinterpreted a number of old songs to reflect her evolution. 

We'll leave you with a clip from her concert in Bergen, in 2010. Here she whips an originally par-ed down Love me Like a River Does into a fierce, roiling, tango-flavored brood of a ballad. Reinvention this good kind of calls to mind another binge-able artist, doesn't it?

Enjoy:

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Melody Gardot. Golden. 

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Fear is a useless emotion. It prevents everything from happening. It’s like closing every door and every window to your opportunity for surpassing anything in existence.

Melody Gardot

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In the 2009 follow-up to her debut record, Melody Gardot swaps out youthful swagger for breathless tension of Nina Simone-caliber proportions.  Here's the title track off of arguably her strongest album to date, My One and Only Thrill. 

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Shades of mauve with Melody Gardot. #thisiswhyicutbangs #haveleathergloveseverbeencooler? #no

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Melody Gardot, Palau de la Música, Barcelona. Did I mention #supersexyjazzgoddess? 

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Chocolate Merengue Pie with Melody Gardot

The ground rules for prepping in The Artful Binge kitchen are simple: 1) Get a glass of wine in hand, and 2) Queue up the appropriate mood music. With holiday (i.e. pie) season upon us, I got jazzed up to bake the all-time best, most delicious dessert there is, my mother's chocolate merengue pie. With rich, creamy, cocoa-flavored sweetness like this flowing 'round the oven, the noirish, trumpet-laced tones of Melody Gardot's Worrisome Heart provide the optimal soundtrack. Pour your cabernet and ready yourself for the next installment of Artful Binge pie-making. We give you:

Paraphernalia you'll need:

Double boiler (If you haven't acquired this rarely-used kitchen item by way of wedding registry exploitation/temporarily moving into your grandmother's house, a mixing bowl that can nest into a larger pot of boiling water will do.)

Another small mixing bowl

Electric egg beater

Glass pie dish

Spatula

Worrisome Heart on the stereo, obviously.

Let's bake a pie, shall we?

*SONG 1: Title track "Worrisome Heart." Kick off your baking with an extra helping of sultry. The slow walking bassline and breathy pauses are perfect for sauntering between cabinets and grabbing ingredients with gusto.

Pie Crust

Refer to Jenny's previous post for instructions on how to make a delectable pate brisee from scratch. Or, if you're like me - more the music brains than the baking brains of your respective operation - just grab a premade pie dough roll from the store (who's judging?), toss it in the pie dish, give it some pokes with a fork for good measure, and pre-bake it for 10 minutes at 450 degrees while you're whipping together the good stuff. Grab when ready, and set aside to cool.

The filling + topping: 

*SONGS 2 & 3: "All That I Need is Love" and "Gone", probably the sunniest sounding tunes on the album. There's plenty of tush-shaking swagger in the first, but the real perk of both tunes is the ample supply of scatting. Scatting is the perfect musical kitchen activity, especially when assembling ingredients. 

Grab the upper pot of the double boiler and thoroughly mix together:

3/4 cup of sugar

2 rounded tablespoons of cornstarch

2 tablespoons of baking cocoa

pinch of salt

..."Do be do DAH!" - tablespoon of cornstarch - "Ba dah do BAH!"  - pinch of salt. See? Very natural. Keep mixing.

Once mixed, you'll measure out 2 cups of milk. Then add only enough milk to the dry mixture to make a thick paste (usually it's about a 1/4 cup of milk max). The rest of the milk you'll use in a minute. 

Separate 3 eggs, one at a time. Mix the yolks into the chocolate paste one by one, and dump the egg whites into the small mixing bowl. Set the bowl aside. Let's focus on the chocolate. 

It's time to heat up the double boiler. Add about 2-3 inches of warm water to the lower pot, and set the stove to medium-high/high.

*SONG 4: One of the best on the album. "Sweet Memory" swings - bubbling along with your boiling water and keeping you swaying back and forth as you stir...which you'll be doing for a while...

Once the water's boiling in the lower pot, set the upper pot with the chocolate mixture on top. 

Stirring constantly, add the remaining milk (~1 and 3/4 cups) to the mixture.

Stir stir stir.

*SONG 5: "Some Lessons," certainly the album's best opportunity to wail into your chocolate covered spatula as you continue your stir. Nicely timed too: you should be ready for your 2nd glass of wine. Pour liberally, and croon on.

"I do not think I can surviiiive...on BRE-AD and winnnne alone."

Exactly. That's why there's pie.

After 10 minutes or so, the mixture should thicken until it's the consistency of warm pudding. Nice and goopy.

*SONG 6: "Quiet Fire" - a sassy, saucy, slow-burn of a tune.

"I'mmmm....burning up."

Appropos: You've been working those arms over a hot stove. And you should be pretty smug about the sweet, delicious looking pot of chocolate you've got to show for it. 

When it's properly thickened, take it off the heat. Add:

1 slice of unsalted butter

1 capful of vanilla

Mix together and behold. You've finished your filling, and it smells awesome!

Last but not least, turn your attention back to the egg whites. Mix in:

3 tablespoons of powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter

Fire up your electric egg beater on high and mix the ingredients in earnest until you have a nice, stiff white foam. If you're iffy about the consistency, keep mixing. The stiffer the better. Plan on giving yourself 9-12 minutes to blast away at it. 

*SONG 7: "One Day."  One day, those egg whites will finally be done too. Eventually.

*SONG 8: "Love Me Like A River Does." 

"Love me like a river doooooes...endlessly....Baby don't rush."

Yep. Still blasting. The perfect merengue requires patience! But the sweet, frothy topping you're making is worth the perseverance.

Now you're ready to assemble the goods and pop into the oven! Give the chocolate filling another good stir so it's nice and creamy, pour it into the pie shell and then, using a flat mixing spoon or spatula, spread the merengue evenly on top of the pie. Be sure all the chocolate is covered (for good looks). My mom always encouraged me to tease the merengue into little peaks - they'll get nice and golden when you bake the pie and make the finished product look gorgeous. 

*SONG 9: "Goodnite." Almost ready to call it a day? You're nearly done, and Melody's right there with you. Shimmie to this one as you make your way to the oven for your final step.

Pop your pie into the oven and bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes. When ready, let it cool for as long as you can stand it (will power may vary). 

Pour yourself your 3rd glass of cab, and serve this fabulous pastry to your favorite chocolate-loving people.

Bon apetit! And as Melody quips in her outro (*SONG 10: "Twilight").... "That was fun."