Dear Nora
There is No Home
Magic Marker
Why does Dear Nora have to call it a day? With authentic lo-fi music already so close to extinction, it stings even worse when one of the most charming stalwarts puts away it’s 4-track. Gloriously chaotic and eccentric, Katy Davidson’s songs on There is No Home –as well as her in back catalog– have the capacity to be anything from the sweetest minute-long ballad imaginable to a sprawling six-minute psychedelic experiment and anywhere in between. Sutured together with DIY aesthetic make seemingly disparate sounds completely reconcilable. “The Dream Five,” the disc’s opener, is two minutes of swelling guitar feedback and barely discernible melody, which segues through the jarring industrial scrape of “Nora in Berlin” and lands comfortably on the sanguine pop of “My Friend and I (For Gretchen)” which sounds like it could have been culled from any Julie Doiron record. Davidson’s method of painting in broad, vibrant stokes then bringing things quickly into fleeting focus speaks to her strength as a musician. It’s especially obvious on “Frank, The Witchdoctor,” which comes from a live backyard recording and features laughter and applauses from the audience and feels oddly at home among the “studio” tracks. Sigh. Dear Nora, I miss you already.
Magic Marker Records: http://www.magicmarkerrecords.com
