AEM014 Rosalind Schonwald

Providence-based singer Ros­alind Schon­wald is my Model Mar­t­ian Moon Girl and here’s why… She’s got a great voice and sings with remark­able matu­rity for a nine­teen year old. Well versed in both jazz and clas­si­cal music, she approaches pop with a strong the­o­ret­i­cal back­ground, but she isn’t too haughty to have a lit­tle fun with it. Her music is acces­si­ble but intrigu­ing enough to war­rant repeat lis­tens. And while her lyrics are super­fi­cially cute and clever, they don’t shy away from heav­ier top­ics. Con­sider the A-Side, a love song for a non-existent “Model Mar­t­ian Moon Boy.”

Schon­wald claims that the refrain, “You’re my Model Mar­t­ian Moon Boy,” is non­sen­si­cal, but beneath the silli­ness she ques­tions the dan­ger of dependency.

Oh, when you finally find your­self under all those good inten­tions
I want you for myself in a way I’d rather not mention

You’re the armor that pro­tects me…
And I’ll keep you if it wrecks me

Schon­wald alter­nates between the hyper-metaphorical and the spe­cific, so the lis­tener never knows exactly what imagery to expect.

Right now you’re the tree­tops that sweetly grace the stars
Right now you have the only shoul­ders I want to lean on.

Her con­trolled vibrato on the high notes con­veys a sense of ambi­gu­ity, both the power and vul­ner­a­bil­ity that love offer.

Clock­ing in at nearly seven min­utes, “Model Mar­t­ian Moon Boy” isn’t exactly a radio hit. There is so lit­tle har­monic vari­a­tion that with a few small cuts the song could be reduced to three min­utes. But it’s no acci­dent that Schon­wald allows it stretch on lux­u­ri­ously. She deliv­ers her lyrics delib­er­ately but slowly, so that you never know quite when the end of the phrase is going to fall. Sur­ren­der and enjoy the lullaby.

Schon­wald wrote “Helen’s Song” about her grand­mother. Although the­mat­i­cally quite dif­fer­ent from “Model Mar­t­ian Moon Boy,” Schon­wald explains, “I con­ceived of both of them as a series of images within a world with fan­tas­ti­cal prop­er­ties while I wrote them. My grand­mother never sat in her liv­ing room yank­ing a chain relat­ing to fate, and I’ve never seen a tree­top graze a star, let alone mak­ing con­tact with one, but in both cases I found the cre­ation of such imagery to be a very real and con­crete release of emo­tion.” Real emo­tion behind the fantasy.

Her mind stays sharp but her body is break­ing
Always giv­ing never tak­ing
It’s pre­pos­ter­ous to me
How she could cease to be
I can’t see I can’t hardly believe

Until the refrain, the music is repressed, tense, sparse, and hes­i­tant. But in the last minute of the record­ing, Schon­wald builds into a pow­er­ful and uplift­ing bluesy progression.

You’ll see that she is fly­ing, she’s fly­ing, there she goes…

Her voice soars along with the lyrics, and when she finally returns to the begin­ning theme, it’s with a height­ened sense of awareness.

Schon­wald is often com­pared to Regina Spek­tor and it’s easy to see why. They have sim­i­lar voices, play the piano, are heav­ily influ­enced by jazz, and share a pen­chant for quirky lyrics. If you like Regina, par­tic­u­larly her ear­lier work, you’ll prob­a­bly like Ros­alind Schon­wald. But let’s not dis­miss Ros­alind Schon­wald as a mere Regina Spek­tor imi­ta­tion, even though that wouldn’t be such a ter­ri­ble thing. Schonwald’s style is more min­i­mal­ist than Spektor’s. She avoids con­ven­tional song struc­ture, pre­fer­ring to take things slowly, allow­ing her songs to develop at a relaxed pace. She doesn’t over-complicate and she doesn’t dumb it down… and the result is some­thing really pleas­ant. She could be a hit in any cof­fee shop from Brook­lyn to Timbuktu!

Nate Green­berg

Side A — Model Mar­t­ian Moon Boy Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Helen’s Song Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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