Tywanna Jo Baskette – Fancy Blue
Blessed with a beguiling, childlike voice that suits perfectly her diaryesque ruminations, Tywanna Jo Baskette unfurls a facility for sketch-style songwriting that brings to mind other talented savants such as Daniel Johnston and, more recently, Devendra Banhart.
Framed by skeletal arrangements and sparse instrumentation, Baskettes tunes zigzag between lo-fi bedroom-tape snippets (The Name Song, Everything Is Awful) and more conventional material that, while fully realized, retains the flavor of plaintive vignettes. Of the latter, high points include the beautifully ethereal Trouble, the honky-tonk shuffle Howdy Howdy Howdy Do, and Pretty Crazy Daisy, a celestial ballad powered by guitars that sound like Neil Young & Crazy Horse auditioning at the gates of heaven.
Baskette has a David Lynch-like penchant for uncovering mystery where others see the ordinary. Theres also a still-life quality to much of her writing, exemplified by Parakeet, a simple reflection upon the loss of a pet bird, and The Beautiful Cow, a molasses-drip ballad that finds Baskette contemplating the mindless existence of farm animals. Add to this a sense of melody that tends toward lullabies, and you have one of the years more eccentric and intriguing releases.