Seeking Alexandra Slate info

[koganbot]

Since someone recently spammed Dave's old Alexandra Slate post on Bedbugs 2006, I went back and listened to Slate's MySpace. She's good, at least on the evidence of three songs. Her voice reminds me of Kara DioGuardi's, rich and deep and pained; so do her melodies, actually, and she has a similar guileless directness in her lyrics - guilelessly direct like such Platinum Weird tracks as "Taking Chances" and "Happiness" and "Nobody Sees," that is, words about falling down and getting up, and so forth, as if no one else will quite understand what this is like.* (Slate is cowriter on "Bad Girl" according to Allmusic, while the other two MySpace tracks aren't on her album** and I haven't found any credits, but DioGuardi had nothing to do with them, at least they're not listed in her credits at BMI; DioGuardi wasn't a big deal then so Slate may well have come up with the style without knowing Kara's work. Johnny Loftus at Allmusic compared and contrasted her to Lucy Woodward when he reviewed Edge Of The Girl.)

Does anyone have any idea what became of Slate? Her album is 2003, and she hasn't posted on her MySpace blog since 2006. Google is no help (at least not the first 80 links), though it did turn up an interview with Hollywood Records A&R guy Jason Jordan who said that Alexandra Slate and Tina Sugandh were a couple of brilliant signings of his that never saw the light of day. (The interview reads as if it had been conducted in some language other than English and then translated.)

*Kara is perfectly capable of indirection; at least I've never really figured out "Avalanche," other than that it seems to be about the frustrations of falling in love with a dreamer, or something.

**EDIT: Actually, "Clumsy On The Wall" is also on the album as a hidden track, though I only found that out from cheapo Russian download sites; neither Allmusic nor Amazon list it.

Comments

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Fffffs "Avalanche" is clearly about her conservative upbringing; I believe I mentioned this on Rolling Teenpop 2007.

I like this Alexandra Slate, but her album appears to not be available for less than $20 anywhere.

[koganbot]

Crikey, new copies are going for $166.49 on Amazon.

Here's a stream of "Die Awake," which is also excellent. And "Blinding The Universe," which is OK, but softer, more generically singer-songwriter, so may take longer to hit me.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well I'll be damned, another collectors' item! I also have the first Jonas Brothers album on Columbia which go for between 30 and 60. Might do some light research on Slate to see what I can turn up...

[koganbot]

I've got a promo of that Jonas Brothers alb, though I don't suppose a promo is worth a lot.

One can download the Slate album for pennies, or a few bucks, anyway, from Eastern European sites that I wouldn't want to give my debit card number to.

[koganbot]

What you said on Rolling Teenpop was "Now, when you find out that Kara was raised by a religious, right-wing Republican congressman, does it make 'Avalanche' any better? Or at least give it the possibility of being better?" But you didn't elaborate. It's probably my favorite song on the Platinum Weird album anyway, and if I could penetrate the lyrics I might like it even more, but the song still comes on too strong in the way it sounds. (I said that it needed to feel less like an avalanche and more about an avalanche.) In any event, "Your promised land doesn't stand, can't hold back the avalanche" is a really good metaphor, but I've never figured out what it's a metaphor for. I kinda guessed there was a boyfriend-type guy making promises and living in the promises but never able to deliver. I suppose that says something about my opinion of my gender as reliable partners in romance and life. Or about my chances of prospering in the world. In any event, I'll wager that you've thought a lot more about the lyrics than I have, but I insist that what they're about is not obvious.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

To me it is (was) obvious, but then, I came at it already knowing Kara's history, so maybe I had a cheat sheet. But I honestly don't think it's that hard to figure out.

I mean, in the verses you've got Kara breathing, sleeping, waiting for reprieve, lying, learning how to live in the herd, dreaming and dismissing her dreams as foolish, trying to get high enough that she can't hear the cries below her and can't see the clouds above her. And then she goes on the run, look what she's become, she can't turn back, she's given up everything she had. And in the choruses you've got someone, or several someones, hypocrites who always told her about the bright shining promised land, but chose to stay in the darkness, to never fulfill their promises. And the bridge: her voice gets low and hard, and she warns them, she doesn't know what they've been told, but the devil stole her soul, and no amount of running can help her escape, the lies keep building and building. And that promised land? It doesn't even exist, it can't hold back the destruction, the things that bury you. It can't hold back Kara. Everything in the song contributes to the idea that the avalanche is Kara, starting small (in the beginning it's just Kara, breathing, unmoving, waiting for reprieve) and snowballing, like an avalanche itself, every detail rolling on and picking up another, telling you again and again how bad she is, how wrong, how she's running and she can't change her course, no matter what's in her way. The song should sound like an avalanche, because, the song is an avalanche, and so is the singer. (After all, she's what destroys the promised land in the end, by telling the hypocrites it doesn't stand.)

I mean, even if you don't know her background, you've got the basic narrative: Kara, who feels she has to be forgiven, who has to lie and learn to live in the herd, feeling like a fugitive, versus someone who talked a good game about goodness, but wasn't actually all that good. And you've got the faith references: the promised land, the devil stealing her soul. Just from the characters and context, you can tell it isn't just about an unreliable boyfriend -- it's about someone preaching, and someone who's seen what a hypocrite the preacher is, who's felt repressed and shamed by the preaching, who's lost faith and wants the preacher to lose faith too.

[koganbot]

Being self-centered, I thought of the avalanche as being a reality principle, since I've never been good at either accepting or holding back reality myself. But then I didn't try to pull together the song in the way you have. I still dissent from the word "obvious."

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I dissent from your dissent.

[koganbot]

Her first two MySpace friends are Gavin Slate and Madeleine Slate, her younger brother and sister, though Allmusic says that the name she was born with is Sleightholm. Gavin's a reedy singer-songwriter ("acoustic/alternative/pop") who updates his MySpace and who shuttles between Toronto and Nashville; a voice of quavering sensitivity that's mundane and pseudo-significant at once. Don't like it on first listen, though his falsetto shows promise. Madeleine is warmer and more self-assured, also trying to make it in singer-songwriter Nashville and also updates her MySpace. Her voice rises up and down the scale like Joni Mitchell, though not as idiosyncratically; she writes personal lyrics that seem workmanlike rather than playful ("I can't invest my life in loving you if you're only going to leave"). I like the voice though I'm not connecting to the songs. "Telling You Now," the best of the three on her MySpace has got new country (i.e., rockish) instrumentation and production.

Maybe this'd be what Alexandra would be doing (is doing now) without Rob Cavallo rocking her up, though if she's still taken by Fiona and Alanis she's probably not so gentle. She released an indie label album Half Full back in '98, at age 16; don't know anything else about it.