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Rating: Can a charming woman, almost two meters tall with a rather monolithic build, possess vocal talents at the limits of the human?? Is it possible to sing while evoking at the same time a hideous and slurred ghost, a country party in the Appalachians, and finally Sleeping Beauty in the forest??? It seems that our Josephine achieves this without any problems...
This new heroine of independent music comes from Chicago, not from the remote and swampy lands near the Chattonga River, and she has already been dubbed the "female Devendra Banhart"; in reality, although not disdaining the friend Banhart for his undeniable talents, I must ascertain that with such a comparison, due justice is not rendered to our beloved tall girl... Josephine, in my humble opinion, is much better. I say this after having well attended two concerts of dear Devendra, one of which just this summer in Faenza, which, if I remember correctly, ended in an ultra-hippy sound orgy, also involving the fortunate audience... But shortly afterward, about a couple of months later (September 05), my friend Henry from Coolissimo calls me, reminding me that there would be a very, very special little concert that evening; "hey, Micki... you know how it is, there are Mi and L'au, a glorious new discovery by Michael Gira (Swans)... people in the industry like us can't refrain...". Right, I think, I love every new release under Young God... "and where?" I ask him. In San Mauro Pascoli, at Villa Torlonia, birthplace of Giovannino P., he hastily responds... well, come on, it's worth it!! I wasn't wrong... two light-dark souls with guitars, shoulder straps, and seductive, melancholic, pale, and loving voices... their eyes left no room for doubt... But then here's this glorious unknown take the stage... "who's this?", "dunno, I think her name is Josephine Frost" someone sitting next to me says... "well, let's listen a bit... anyway, I'm already happy now..."
You can imagine my surprise when this one started articulating her truly dissonant yet lofty arpeggios, and above all, when her vocal cords unfolded in all their majesty. Pure narcolepsy. Soothed by seductive notes that I didn't know whether to attribute to the musical instrument or to the voice, my eyes grew heavier, my mind translucent, penetrated by a vortex of passion and lushness, started its own journey chasing those distant melodies, those elfin and dreamy frequencies... I fell asleep five or six times, only to be startled awake each time by the enthusiastic applause of the audience, who, like me, seemed to find themselves in some unknown lysergic dimension... At the end of the concert, we see her in a corner, solitary, laughing, external to the affair, like a silhouette hanging on the wall; Henry and I greet her, and she returns the greeting as a long-dead relative would, with benevolence and sadness together... thanks, we think... What can be said at this point about the album I bought?!... it well renders the essential characteristics of the hippyish spectrality typical of Josephine, and she is accompanied on this album by two individuals who seem to have stepped out of the Woodstock videotape. Country-folk guitars, sometimes visceral and on the edge of post-punk, dreamy atmospheres, dewdrops, much more, and above all, the absolutely impeccable vocal virtues of this champion of music.
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