Tanya Goltz - Pieces of Me (Checked Label Services)

We tend to get hung up on labels and genres, needing to clearly define musical demarcations and arrange songs and artists into neat boxes, even to the point of inventing post-this and that-core; it’s out of control, I tell you. And even if you go in for that sort of stuff, a lot of music is made that doesn’t conform to those neat arrangements, and Tanya Goltz is the perfect example.

It’s not that her music is so way out that a genre hasn’t been invented yet; in fact, the opposite is true; in it, you will find everything from folk and rock, country, pop, and blues and more, all tumbling around in ever-changing quantities, creating a sound that feels fresh enough that you keep coming back to it, yet familiar enough that, at times, the songs feel like songs that you have been listening to all your life. Pieces of Me is her latest release, a short, sharp and shocking great collection. Five songs, five future, would be classics.

The title track that opens is a surprisingly gentle way to kick off, a subtle folk-pop ballad, gently lifted from its understated majesty by a bit of rock weight on the chorus, but proving that when the music is this great, you don’t need to rely on volume and velocity to make an impact, not when you have agility and tastefulness on your side.

“Sketches,” which follows, similarly ebbs and flows between gentle folk-pop minimalism and more elevated lifts, the sort of song that should find its way to the mainstream charts, not just because it deserves to be heard but also to provide a new benchmark for a mainstream music machine which seems to have lost its way.

Darker sentiments and more brooding sonics define “Steal My Soul,” “Dead Of Night” has all manner of epic qualities, startling dynamics, and cinematic gloss, and “No One Wins” is a stark, spacious, bluesy, contemporary country number.

Imagine if you were a talented and astute enough artist to put out an EP that plays like a small “best of” sampler. Imagine if you did that as your debut release! Well, Tanya Goltz has done precisely that.

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