From Lincoln to Continental

OK, I meant to make this a bilingual review as I have in the past, but what I am about to say is as far beyond my French abilities as going to the Moon is beyond cavemen.

I believe I have found need for a new tag on Jamendo. I'm just going to go ahead and use it. Don't like it? Don't use it. But it's here now.

The tag is "Ecto." As with most of my stories, there is a long story behind this. However, I'm not the one who wrote it or came up with it. Check out the following links for more of the story:

The Ectophile's Guide to Good Music:

http://ectoguide.org/

The Ecto Home Page

http://www.smoe.org/ecto/

[Je fais des excuses à mes amis français ; ces sites ne feignent pas pour être internationaux :( et ils sont en anglais seulement.]

The definition of "Ecto" is, unfortunately, self-referential and circular. An "ecto" album is one which ectophiles tend to like; and ectophiles tend to like ecto albums.

LOL, internet.

A better definition is to define by example: "ecto" artists include Beth Orton, Eleanor MacAvoy, Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, Joan Armitrading, Cocteau Twins, Dido, 10000 Maniacs, the Indigo Girls, Innocence Mission, Kirsty MacColl, Animal Logic, and so on.

There are a few guys -- ecto also includes Peter Gabriel and Frank Zappa, for instance -- but the vast majority of "ecto" artists are female.

Now, how did I find all this out?

Simple. The list I just gave you is not from their website, it's from my CD collection! I was an ectophile before I even knew what the term meant!

In the case of this album, the vocalist SharashkA / Jayne Hartman clearly sounds as if she belongs on my CD shelf. Her voice is very similar to Deborah Holland from the band Animal Logic.

I really like this album, and it almost made it to 10 out of 10. However, there is one minor point:

Tempo. This album needs a barn burner, a song that just finally rips it. As it stands, it's pretty, but after listening to the entire album, one ends up aching for a bit of contrast. When I played it in the car, on the way back from Jacksonville airport, I found my eyelids were getting sort of heavy. It can't all be lullabyes. The closest to an uptempo song is "Aurora."

Nevertheless, if you've never heard of the term "ecto" before, let this album be your introduction. It was good enough to immediately remind me of all the above artists -- and that's saying a lot.