| Seaworthy is a singular, astoundingly magical creation that announces itself like stride piano amplified for a very large body of water. |
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True Margrit
Seaworthy
(2005)
Just when you wonder where all the Ben Folds clones are, along comes Margrit Eichler and her able-bodied trio, True Margrit, to dispel the myth. While there are some Folds comparisons to be made, this is no attempt to fan the keys of a piano in the style of one who came before or since; Seaworthy is a singular, astoundingly magical creation that announces itself like stride piano amplified for a very large body of water (go with me on this, will you?).
Possessing the soul of a jazz player trapped in the body of a popster, Eichler tickles the ivories and stomps on them, often at the same time. It is important to remember that the piano is a percussive, as well as melodic, instrument, and this talented, committed player uses that duality to her advantage.
Sweet at one turn and elasticized the next, Eichler's voice is somewhat reminiscent of Aimee Mann and Andrea Perry; she bends the notes when it’s appropriate and sings them straight ahead when it’s not. Hers is a remarkable instrument—emotive, sensitive, and aggressive when the mood demands. She’s quite the talent, one to be reckoned with.
Eichler's music falls somewhere in the pond in which swims Billy Joel, Elton John, Mann and Perry. She’s intelligent, and not afraid to run the style gamut; she’s confident enough to deliver a hysterical tour de force, a thinly-veiled song about sexual confusion (but on whose part?) that is two-thirds of a step away from brazen, “Members Only.” The poppy number is a catchy winner, masterfully crafted, with one of the great lyrics of the year: “Now when I drift off to sleep/I want my piano but you keep/Strapping that guitar on me/An instrument I do not need.” Brilliant.
In fact, Eichler's playful use of language and keen ability to flesh out a story, sometimes with the barest of details, is one of this singer/songwriter’s greatest, most affecting traits. In the beautiful ballad “Electricity,” Eichler plays with the idea of electricity and waters sparking attraction, if not necessarily traditional contact; the lines “How can you say lights like sparks on the bay/Don’t reflect on the way waters illustrate/How they connect like electricity” are boundless as thoughts to spark our brains as we consider the basis and veracity of our connections in life.
Channeling the stride piano and New Orleans jazz of Randy Newman on the sprightly “Deliver Me,” Eichler weaves a “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” type of tale about blame, something she sings is “easier to spin…I’m vain enough when I get killed/To smile at the tears you spill.” With blame, I guess, comes revenge. Hah!
The idea of wanting something so bad that you’ll take the risk to survive is explored in the fetching “Everyone Wins,” wonderfully arranged to spotlight Eichler's piano and widescreen vocal. The song builds to an aggressive harmony onslaught, as sweet as it is propulsive. The other ideas explored in these songs are common to everyone’s consciousness, and subconscious, to be sure; the spin Eichler puts on them—how she adapts them to her musical attack—is the key to listeners being awed by her.
Water can be an incredibly passive image; it just lays there, affected only by nature’s gyrations and human activity. The image of water floats in and out of many of these songs. In “Hours in Reverse,” polar ice caps melt; in “Deliver Me,” the narrator smiles at the tears a person spills; in “Great Praise,” stars rain down; and in the closer, “Nothing,” the question is asked whether there is a “peaceful sea/you can go when you’re not yet dead/where waters lap and now you’ve snapped/nothing needs to be said.” Water appears, then, to have somewhat of a three-dimensional personality, affecting us in many ways, even as simply as the first drops of a shower slapping one’s eyeglasses with a liquid stain.
At its most extreme, water gets us from here to there; drinking it makes us stronger, even when our bodies’ inclinations are to be weak. On this dramatically musical and literate album, Eichler and her cohorts Gary Hobish and Andrew Bacon, along with a parcel of special guests, shine their spotlight on all manner of water—perhaps, most especially, the people who are made of so very much of it.
Alan Haber
October 30, 2005
Go to: True Margrit