SUICIDAL YODELS

"'FILE UNDER JAZZ' is the recommendation on the Traumton website for Erika Stucky' Suicidal Yodels on this label. That is an insufficient description that doesn't do justice to the manner in which this singer rises above all genres. Her yodeling and accordion playing are rooted in Switzerland in any case. Her parents were born there, emigrated to the the US, but then returned when their daughter was a young teener. Furthermore, she also lets other elements blow about like folk, c&w and gospel. Stucky also likes location sounds, soundscapes. So some of the tracks were recorded in a shack where wood was being chopped and sawed, in train stations (Zurich and Basel), and used recordings of mumbled prayers during a wake. In Blueberry Hill you can hear the grand acoustics of an empty railway station, with an arriving train and a passing group of kids. But everything revolves around the singing of Stucky herself, not perfectionist and polished off with electronic devices, and thus brittle and sincere. As yodel expert bart plantenga noted in an interview I did with him several years ago: "When you yodel, you're honest." That is the impression I get from Stucky. This is a CD that can once and for all cure you of the notion that yodeling is inevitably corny and grotesque. Stucky has managed to find a warm place in my heart." New Folk Sounds, René van Peer, 1/2008 (via www.traumton.de)