Villalobos is a songwriter already known for her willingness to dwell unflinchingly in reality but on Sola
she goes even deeper, holding her heart up in all its vulnerable
lucidity. Each song on Sola has lines and melodies that scrape away the
layers of denial that get us through the everyday, therefore this album
is not for the faint hearted. Like the realist short stories of
Raymond Carver, her songs are visceral anthems in which one senses the
bottom has fallen out, making visible the seriousness of what’s at
stake, the songs affirm that possibility has always existed…and in fact
still exists.
Villalobos became one of the most acclaimed artists in the Americana community with her breakthrough album, Rock N Roll Pony.
Legendary BBC disc jockey, Bob Harris called it “a contender for album
of the year” while Pop Matters declared her to have “unquestionably the
finest voice in the country-rock genre today.” Avoiding the sophomore
jinx, Villalobos’ next offering succeeded. Miles Away was
released in 2006 to the same, critical plaudits, as her acclaimed
predecessor received. Paste Magazine hailed it as”...timeless, it
combines every element that makes a recording classic." Summer of 2009
saw Villalobos releasing Days on Their Side. American Songwriter
raved that the songs came “off the speakers like holographic Cracker
Jack surprises” and stated that Villalobos had “taken the Lucinda
Williams/Sheryl Crow model to a new level, (and it's about time somebody
did).”
In 2011, exhausted and creatively empty, Villalobos took a break
from making music. "I was done, my hunger for it was like a numb
finger. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t draw, I had no imagination or
ability to reflect anymore, nor did I have the physical energy to do so
but the impulse (opposed to the hunger), to create was still there so I
enrolled myself in a music program at LACC. I liked the immediacy of
its rewards. It gave me instant gratification, and eventually the
impulse to create turned into a viscous hunger that I had been purposely
ignoring. I found myself looking up from a deep dark well and from
this well is where the songs on the new record came from."
In January of 2012 Villalobos began working on her 5th studio album, Sola.
She assembled a group of talented and accomplished musicians to bring
to life her songs. “Sometimes songs need candlelight and sometimes they
need a lone tumbleweed blowing across them. It’s about setting up mood
and attitude. I like painting a different scene when it comes to the
arrangement and creation of parts. It's a fine line though, I am not
going for an avant guard sound, I'm just looking for different ways to
ignite the engines of the songs, the engines that move them forward into
their finished form, like developing a character in a movie.”
The song “Hold on to Rockets” is an example of Villalobos’ effort to
create a sound like nothing else out there. The twang and old school
pop of the melody is like a 1993 Sheryl Crow crashing into the
apocalyptic bombast of Guided by Voices, delivered in the context of
Villalobos' voice, a voice rich in nuances, tone and color. She lays it
plain the ways we self sabotage and cross our own paths with jinxes,
and the song is a spell to break this.
In "Come Undone", grief is the baseline in which all forward
movement takes place. The song is a romantic two-step in slow time to
Heywood’s pedal steel that feels like a heartbreak ballad at first then
builds to a swooning fugue state. A surprising celebration of knowing
that only a run over heart is capable of holding the mysteries of mature
love.
In “Wandering By” Villalobos effortlessly evokes imagery and
mystery, with eloquence without pretension. “God is sucking up so
fortify me some air / Figure it out, figure it out / And I’ll run my
luck as fast as I can to silhouette lands, to silhouette lands”.
“I dream about making good work.” states Villalobos, “ I’m inspired
by interactions, touching things, smelling things, and just opening my
eyes. It’s involuntary and then you get these urges to be creative, to
write. Having a creative urge as an artist is actually painful
sometimes. Writing songs satisfies the urge.”
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