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Josephine Foster: Exorcist of the Heart

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By: Alibastard | in: Music |

So you might not be an expert on the major composers of the German Romantic period. I’m not either. And Josephine Foster might not be either, that’s possible. But the waif-ish, thoughtful looking Colorado native certainly shows an affinity towards them on her latest Locust recording, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Creepily warbling through the works of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, Foster harmonizes against herself as anyone from the freak folk scene would have you imagine they should.

Josephine Foster

The recordings have an economy in their production that lends her stunningly tender voice the spotlight it deserves and the impact that could otherwise be clouded by too many cooks in the kitchen. But as the catgut guitar methodically plucks its way through your first listen, and her voice doubles on itself, something happens about three minutes into the first track that no one expected. Especially if you are unfamiliar with her rock and roll history as bandleader of the calmly psychedelic The Supposed.
But there you are, three minutes into this pretty stunningly spare adaptation of something from the German Romantic period, by someone who you might rightfully assume is German herself, a melancholy chanteuse keeping your interest with her tonal beauty, and at a brief interlude, as if playing in a nearby room while she was recording, comes a fuzzy guitar that just rocks out through the interlude, and continues through her return back into the verse, the chorus and, finally, freaks out in no rehearsed sort of way to carry you into track 2. And track 2 is the same idea, but flipped. An electrical guitar plays a guiding melody over the classical guitar’s accompaniment, the electric doubled by a hollow-body harmonizing itself against it. Her voice continues its doubled harmonizing.

Joesphine Foster

“Lyrics by Goethe”, you say to yourself looking at the liner notes, grasping for straws. You probably don’t know who that is, though you’ve definitely heard the name. And you are almost 100 % sure he’s rolling mischievously in his grave, quite pleased with the lady Josephine. And just as the arrangement is starting to seem normal to you it all cuts out very organically, and three or four of her voices layer on one another in this scary, booming cathedral affectation, singing pretty much the same part she’s been singing the whole way through. And you do have goose-bumps.
The rest of the album is similar, varying from song to song, a viscous outpour of melodies that seem at times heartbroken, at others haunting, and still at others just so outlandishly strange that you listen through all 7 songs, having felt the broken angles of that bleeding jewel that is romantic longing, only wishing there were more.  

Josephine Foster: “An Die Musik”


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Posted on March 4, 2007

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