Album Review/ Alt Rock Blues : Chellcy Reitsma’s ‘Momento Mori’
Chellcy Reitsma is a singer-songwriter and musician who oscillates on the edge of style. Her ability to create and carry themes into new perspectives of music is remarkable. Gliding through a spectrum of alt rock, folk rock, Americana, and blues, the artist curates visually immersive soundscapes that are nothing short of cinematic. Featuring stunning sonic frames with visionary design, she nurtures the theme into an almost tactile reality. There is a force of revolution in her which is realized with sophisticated experimentals and elegant progressions. Her latest release is ‘Momento Mori’, an album that combines both a powerful and a sentimental ethos.
It opens with ‘Dark Times’, a soundscape that takes on the energy of a groovy underground bar. Its dim, dazy atmosphere is sparked with a rock n roll and a blues rock sizzle. And Chellcy’s vocals, sharp in a way that is reminiscent of The Bangles, slices through this scene to create a tremble. It’s the only track of its kind across the collection.
Others are stitched in with folk rock and alt blues novelties; each one its own world. In ‘The Darkness’, she recalls the flavors of Simon and Garfunkel, uniting it with acoustic specks, and an evocatively blues vocals. With the spotlight thrown around it, her voice imbibed a smoky melancholy that only distills with time. We see a similar flow in ‘Sad Lullaby’ and ‘Phoenix Fly’. And then in ‘Death’s at the Door’, the blues become more and more like Amy Whinehouse, sultry, prolonged, and dreamy. The romanticism is increased several fold, as they sway through rhythm and melodic curtains.
The track, ‘Violet Flame’ forms somewhere between the styles and moods of Amy Whinehouse, Carlos Santana, and Lana Del Rey. It’s an interesting piece, lit with rooms of Latin flavored jazz, whiskey blues vocal textures carried into swirling spells of dreamy darkness. ‘Boat to Nod’ carries a similar vocal spectrum, but it is placed in a pool of wiry guitar grooves and funk rhythms, before it loops back into the slow dazing dreaminess.
The tracks have such varied expressions of the artist, dimensions that are stylistically related but not stagnant. There is so much innovation, however minimalist, nuanced or subtle. They are all cultivated into pillars of the album as you make your way through it. Listen Now!
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