Imagine Neil Young songs interpreted by Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams covering Townes Van Zandt, or Patty Griffin playing Tom Waits, this is how we can feel when listening Lara Ewen for the first time. With this first full length album Ghosts and Gasoline, the New York City born and raised singer and songwriter Lara Ewen accompanied with her band “The Unstrung Orchestra” is accomplishing her own ventures out of the standard East Coast waters with her own brand of bluesy, alt-country ballads. Ghosts and Gasoline is exemplary for what is essentially a first album, merging classic country and blues with a new attitude as appealing as it is satisfying. Ewen’s simple lyrics and arrangements are matched up just fine by her so satisfyingly smoky and melodic voice with a femininely rugged constitution, like cigarette-smelling velvet and a “disillusioned but struggling to remain hopeful” edge to her heady, Stevie Nicks-like vocals, Lara Ewen’s style is one that evokes a constant stream of flashbacks from those moments in life that toughen our skin, give us our spine and strengthen our resolve; it’s that quality that seems to communicate, “I’ve been through some crap in my life.”

Her voice pushes outward at the seams of these songs with an abundance of distilled emotion, producing that coagulated, leathery and roughened quality; at the same time, there is an equal, complementary spirit of vulnerability and surrender, a kind of agreement with the self that life is bound to toss us around, bound to knock us around a bit, but it’s no reason to keep the heart from hoping. Her songs are the type that give a certain sweetness to pain, imbue a certain kind of peace found in the tumbles we all take; they are the sorts of songs that elicit a sigh where the heart previously couldn’t let go.

The characters on Ghosts and Gasoline tend to reflect on their life: the mistakes they’ve made and the exciting promises to be found in a new start. These ladies approach their men with a confident vulnerability: you know they’re not going to flinch, but the wounds are real and ache at all the right moments. The songs are loaded with striking imagery and rarely rely on lyrical clichés that tend plague this genre. Ewen’s voice is what separates her from the pack. Like the aforementioned gypsy or Morrissey, her pitch wavers delightfully within the anchor of the arrangements. But Ewen’s real distinctiveness lies in her delivery. You can practically smell the bourbon and menthols in the vocals, and the sexual tension stings.

Ewen’s most distinctive gift is this particular ability to tap into the grit and gristle with an approach that ends up being ultimately heartwarming and consoling, even inspiring. With echoes of Patti Griffin and Lucinda Williams, her songs settle nicely into the territory between alt country and singer/songwriter folk, making Ghosts and Gasoline an album to live with, an album that will naturally be digested slowly and contemplatively. This is the kind of album which sticks with you long-term, leaving an emotional imprint in the same league with your first kiss, your first road trip and your first heartbreak.

Ghosts and Gasoline
Lara Ewen and The Unstrung Orchestra
Original Release Date: March, 2007
Number of Discs: 1
Label: none
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Band Website : www.UnstrungMusic.com

“Josephine”

“Untethered”

“The Airport Song”

“20 Years Ago”

“Turning Blue”