September 2003 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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Odessa Chen offers classical-tinged, DIY solo album 15 September 2003
Singer/songwriter Odessa Stefanie Chen arrived in Oakland in 1996 via Baltimore and Tucson, moving to California with Troia, her all-female bass, bass, and voice trio. Just before they disbanded in 1999, Troia picked up a write-in 'Beyond' award for innovation from the readers of the San Francisco Weekly. “I didn’t know how to play guitar at all when the band broke up,” vocalist/songwriter Chen told Rockbites this week. “I made a decision at that time to stop looking for band members and to learn to be self sufficient…. I really was bad at first but I think it’s important to stay active even if it’s a humbling experience. I couldn’t have replaced the women in Troia with anyone else. They were unique, so that was my solution. I did that for about two or three years and then finally thought I was ready to try to make a record.” This past spring, Chen self-released her very personal, classical-tinged/slo-core debut solo LP, One Room Palace. Fragile yet powerful, and dedicated to a lost friend, the album revolves around sadness, longing, and timeless love, treating these universal human themes with courage and respect. “I had so many feelings that needed to be expressed that couldn’t be in my daily life,” says Chen. “Music is the way I process things…. Writing songs doesn’t erase things but you come to some sort of familiarity with them. That said, for me music is primarily a spiritual thing. Not religious, because I am not religious, but music is full of grace and light. It’s very pure.” For the eight songs on One Room Palace, Chen sings and plays guitar, bass, cello, and keyboards, while guests add percussion, additional strings, mellotron, and backing vocals. The album comes with elegant, monochrome artwork including evocative photography and typography by Chen—making this a DIY project inside and out. The mysterious front-cover photo is of a bird house in silhouette. “I took it in my neighborhood and didn’t think much of it until it came back [from getting developed]. It was so out of focus that the wire holding it up in the sky is gone. Symbolically it relates pretty closely to the title of the record. I wanted to convey the idea of a small scale life which somehow holds this larger mystery and beauty.” One Room Palace is slow and gentle, like a stormy sky in slow motion before the rain hits. And then it hits. Chen and co-producer Jeff Byrd combine her delicate vocals and dramatic lyrical content with dreamlike, ever-changing musical arrangements powered by themes of love and death, longing and beauty. As points of reference for Chen’s understated, affecting vocals, consider Icelandic singer/composer Björk, Welsh singer/songwriter Katel Keineg, or Germany’s hyper-romatic, falsetto-voiced Maximilian Hecker. This is an album best listened to played loud—but with quiet focus. The emotional power driving this heartfelt music demands it. What’s next? “My new material has a lot more light in it. Flight and trancendence seem to be themes. It’s going to be a lot sparser in arrangement and hopefully have even more of a live feel. Side By Side [from One Room Palace] was recorded mostly live with guitar and vocals together and I’d like to do more of that.” You can order One Room Palace directly from Chen’s website. | Odessa Chen | | top of page | |
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