{"id":15357,"date":"2018-10-13T05:30:14","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T09:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15357"},"modified":"2018-10-10T09:07:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T13:07:15","slug":"album-review-elza-nothings-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/13\/album-review-elza-nothings-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Elza &#8212; Nothing&#8217;s Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-15358\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/elza.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/elza.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/elza-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/elza-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Combining literate, singer-songwriter approach with instrumentation that draws form trip-hop and moody alternapop, Canadian artist Elza has crafted an album of subtle beauty on <i>Nothing\u2019s Wrong<\/i>. Elzy doesn\u2019t possess the overly-affected vocal mannerisms so trendy these days; she sings in a straightforward, unadorned manner, and she has the pipes to pull that off with out artifice. Her background \u2013 Russia, Israel, Vancouver \u2013 has surely informed her musical approach in some ways, but for the most part, <i>Nothing\u2019s Wrong<\/i> doesn\u2019t explicitly sound like anything from any of those places.<\/p>\n<p>The minor-key, contemplative tunes have a feel not unlike Steven Wilson\u2019s more mainstream (i.e. less progressive-minded) material. Elza\u2019s voice is, naturally, at the center of the arrangements on each of the album\u2019s ten songs, but the playing \u2013 subtle, understated yet assured \u2013 is intriguing, interesting and (most importantly of all) sympathetic and appropriate for Elzy\u2019s voice. And just when you think that <i>Nothing\u2019s Wrong<\/i> is going to be a colleciton of soothing, downtempo tracks, she breaks out with someitng like \u201cSwayed,\u201d a rocking, highly-charged tune that \u2013 in a just world &#8211; -would earn some serious airplay.<\/p>\n<p>With its wonderful string arrangement, \u201cHollow\u201d does feature some textures that suggest Northeast Africa and the Middle East \u2013 melodic lines that would be at home on an Aviv Geffen recording. \u201cSimple Dreams\u201d shows that Elza can do the introspective acoustic ballad thing well. And the instrumentation on the title track is memorable and effective. In fact those adjectives can be applied to most all of the tunes on this release. \u201cCan\u2019t Heal\u201d is perhaps the only (very minor) misstep: it\u2019s a fine tune, well executed, but it sounds perhaps a bit too much like Natalie Merchant-era 10,000 Maniacs. To be fair, one could do worse than sound like that, and it\u2019s only the one tune. That aside, fans of melancholy, well-crafted adult pop should make a point of hearing <i>Nothing\u2019s Wrong<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Combining literate, singer-songwriter approach with instrumentation that draws form trip-hop and moody alternapop, Canadian artist Elza has crafted an album of subtle beauty on Nothing\u2019s Wrong. Elzy doesn\u2019t possess the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,65],"tags":[3576],"class_list":["post-15357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","tag-elza","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15359,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357\/revisions\/15359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}