Rosenvinge, Christina

Rosenvinge, Christina

Continental 62

Smells Like Records

Continental 62 is the flight that connects Newark, NJ, and Madrid, Spain, a route Christina Rosenvinge has become quite familiar with in recent years. Her new album has made the trip several times as well, with basic tracks recorded in Madrid, and overdubs done at studios in Manhattan and Brooklyn.  On her third Smells Like Records album -- her second along with 2004's Foreign Land to be released both here and in her native Spain -- she's joined by longtime accomplices Tim Foljahn and Lee Ranaldo on guitar and vocals, rhythm section Jeremy Wilms and Steve Shelley, guests Charlie Bautista on guitar and violin, and well-known Spanish experimentalist turned pop-crafter Suso Saiz, who also co-produces. Of the ten tracks, seven are sung in English, and lyrically Rosenvinge has hit a vital sweet-spot, achieving maximum depth with the simplest language. Her songcraft in general has reached an impressive maturity, with seductive, coiled verses resolving in perfect choruses.  The arrangements are streamlined and strong, with Rosenvinge's piano playing, sparse yet supple, adding to the shambled grandeur. Perhaps the biggest surprise on Continental 62 however is the vocal experimentation. Stretching her voice dramatically, she effortlessly transcends the Nico and Francoise Hardy influence of her earlier work.  The album's highlights include the gorgeous descending chorus of the title track; the propulsive brushwork and close harmonies of "Liar to Love"; "Jelly," a wearied and fragile take on the jazz standard; and the prismatic, closing waltz "Nickel Song."

Rosenvinge, Christina

Foreign Land

Smells Like Records

*** With the release of Spanish-Danish chanteuse Christina Rosenvinge's sophomore Smells Like Records album, one has to wonder why more Latin American superstars don't trade in tedious fame for rewarding cult careers as singer-songwriters. She recorded in New York City at Echo Canyon and The Magic Shop, and again enlisted Steve Shelley, Lee Ranaldo, and Tim Foljahn, with added bass playing and arranging courtesy of Jeremy Wilms, guitar and voice of Smokey Hormel (Beck, Tom Waits, Smokey and Miho), and her first collaboration with the Soldier String Quartet (who have provided for luminaries ranging from John Cale to Guided by Voices), giving things a nouvelle vague flavor, recalling pre-electronic German music or Nordic pop, all tied together with some good old clanging New York experimentation.  Soaked in sweet melancholy, "King Size" and "Submission" (equal parts Gainsbourg and the VU), should become classic cuts, as should conceptual experiments such as the claustrophobic "German Heart" (imagine Neubauten fronted by Brigitte Fontaine), which stretches itself into a sharp lamento. Other surprises await in "Dream Room", with its angelic girlie choir drowned in a dark undersea cave, and "Off Screen", which could've been culled from an unfilmed Truffaut screenplay. Rosenvinge's lyrics deliver intelligent confessions with the starkness of Marguerite Duras, both sweet and sour, ironic, elegant, meticulous, brittle and inspired. They seem to come from a personal, mysterious world of concise romanticism peopled with kindred spirits such as Françoise Hardy, Stina Nordenstam and Nico.  TRACK LISTING 1. Off Screen 2. 36 3....

Rosenvinge, Christina

Frozen Pool

Smells Like Records

***Plenty of pop personae have begun by making probing, personal music, only to regress into feeding the machine as the need to sustain a "career" begins to take precedent over purely artistic aims. Since her stint as a bona fide pop-star in the Latin-speaking world in the '80s, Madrid-born, Danish-descended Christina Rosenvinge (pron. ROSE-en-VENG-uh) has done just the opposite. After numerous hit singles as part of the duo Alex and Christina landed the singer firmly in the media maelstrom of endless TV and magazine covers she began a solo career recording a trio of albums for Warner Latin America. These albums, written primarily by Christina, became successively more sophisticated and culminating with 1996's Cerrado, whose sessions baptized Sonic Youth's just-completed Manhattan studios and were produced by SY guitarist Lee Ranaldo. Rosenvinge stayed in touch with the SY family, and on a 1999 visit to NYC contributed vocals to Two Dollar Guitar's Weak Beats and Lame-ass Rhymes. Smitten with the city and the possibility of working with a clean artistic late, she moved to New York and began performing locally with Two Dollar Guitar as her backing group. Since then she's opened for folk-rock-messiah-of-the-moment Elliot Smith at the Knitting Factory, put in an appearance as part of the Sunday Night Songwriter Series at NYC's Tonic in October, and performed at the Smells Like Records showcase at South By Southwest in Austin, TX in March 2000. Rosenvinge's rare and astonishing emotional range in her singing matches the subtle sophistication, expansive range of...