About four-and-a-half years ago, I decided to move to NYC to find a fresh crop of opportunities. The action, I was convinced, was no longer in Pittsburgh.
About four-and-a-half years ago, Morgan Erina decided to move to Pittburgh to find a fresh crop of opportunities. The action, she was convinced, was no longer in NYC.
Once in Pittsburgh, she met with the ragtag Acousticafe clique that had (maybe the week before) sent me off with a singalong of “Right On,” and found musicians eager to accept her into the fold. Whenever I came back to Pittsburgh, I would see the exchange student of sorts sing with an assortment of kids, turning out killer covers like an alternafolk glee club, but then she would do her own stuff, and the place would go dead silent.
Dead. Silent.
Ms. Erina has one of those voices people try to make you think they have: bittersweet, haunting, and just pretty as all get-out. It’s hard to hear it and not see exactly the box you’d like to put it in, but it’s harder still to hear it and see your way clear to complementing it in any way, so it’s wholly remarkable that Guy Russo figured out how.
Guy and Morgan are such weirdly compatible singers and writers that now that they’re in this pairing (named Broken Fences for probably a lot of reasons that have no place in an Egobiscuit), that when they start up, you can’t imagine one without the other, or why everybody doesn’t try to do it this way, and then you get an immediately protective instinct about them because it’s only album one and what if they lose sight of every perfect thing that’s happening here, and then you forget your own name and address and all you want to do is drive their tour bus around.
Their debut album is recorded with a sparseness and savvy that is enviable and gorgeous, as it swaps back and forth between Morgan and Guy’s songs like a two-person round robin. It’s perfect first-coffee music, but it stands up over an entire day’s worth of spins, and each time you hear it, a different song becomes your favorite.
I don’t think I’ve ever made anything this good.
Fuck. I mean, listen:
Have you heard anything so face-punchingly beautiful lately? I don’t think you have. But you deserve to.
Yes, you do.
Sue
I find it difficult to put into words how you have amazingly found words to describe the the emotions that come from listening to and seeing Broken Fences. You;ve nailed it. Thank you. Sue
Paul Tabachneck
Thank you, Sue! I love both of these people and enjoy their company whenever they make it out to NYC or I’m in Pittsburgh.