Jill Tracy (piano and vocals). Performs solo or with members of The Malcontent Orchestra: including Randy Odell (drums/percussion/metals); Kenny Annis (contrabass/electric bass/sarod); Paul Mercer (violin); Alex Nahas (Chapman Stick, electric bass, FX); Daniel Fabricant (contrabass); Nathaniel Johnstone (electric bass/violin); Ralph Carney (horns); Tony Cross (violin, viola, harmonium); Daniel Baer (violin); Alexander Kort (violoncello, contrabass); Erica Mulkey (violoncello); Nadine Whitfield (bassoon); and special guest eccentrics.
Sounds Like
...that sordid past life you wish you were still living.
"Jill Tracy creates an elegant netherworld both seductive and terrifying." CLIVE BARKER
"an elegant and mysterious siren." VILLAGE VOICE
"If there is any justice in this life, the world will discover Jill Tracy." RAGE
"San Francisco's First Lady of Melancholia." BAY GUARDIAN
"One must be careful of Jill Tracy. The pale and shadowy chanteuse quickly draws you in with her noirish compositions; her songs are eerie and enticing, clever and clawing, and replete with gothic glamour. The San Francisco-based New York émigré likes her fare dark and bloody, sprinkled with cabaret charm, old-time chamber chops and an almost overpowering sense of seductive gloom." PACIFIC SUN
"stunning...Jill Tracy is a Marlene Dietrich-esque Bay Area icon." LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Jill Tracy-- I thank you for your deliriously sweet and evil musical beauty, your unique talent and independent strength in these, the days of not only the Dumbing Down Of America, but the profoundly redundant state of music in general." LYDIA LUNCH
"Drop-dead original & dark as a drowning pool. The perfect garden for your Midnight of Good & Evil. I can almost feel the spanish moss oozing out of my speakers... I sometimes
wonder if Jill Tracy is actually a ghost." JELLO BIAFRA
"Very distinctive and exciting..Jill Tracy sings with the kind of breathy intimacy that will fulfill your dreams of being tortured by beautiful women." LA WEEKLY
"beautiful, striking work" CHICAGO READER
"one clever vamp" USA TODAY
"A siren of the dark side...combining the intellectual eroticism of Baudelaire, and the cheerful ghoulishness of illustrator Ed Gorey, Jill Tracy spins intoxicating tales of mayhem. Plus, theres -that VOICE!" ARTE SIX
"When you hear Jill Tracy's lush, sultry voice and experience the spooky melancholy of her lyrics, youre hooked...you cant escape the haunting and seductive powers of her macabre torch songs. As you listen, your will is no longer your own." ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN
"Jill Tracy is utterly intriguing. She transports you into a magical world solely of her creation." NPRs ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
"Like a film noir femme fatale, Jill Tracy is gorgeous; ballerina thin and Victorian porcelain pale.....a stunningly hypnotic performer." BAY GUARDIAN
"There’s something otherworldly about Jill Tracy. She has a poise, finesse and enigmatic quality rarely seen in live performance--she effortlessly floats above the fray." SANTA CRUZ METRO
"There are only so many albums that come hurtling at you like a freight train and completely knock the breath out of you. Diabolical Streak is one of those albums... absolutely brilliant...It's seductive, it's creepy, and at the end you'll wish you had someone to lure into your own trap, because Jill Tracy makes it sound so perfect." AMAZON.COM
"Ironically, it seems like the grunting, hamfisted fury (and its oppostie, the teenybopper bubblegum) that rules MTV and the pop airwaves is driving more and more listeners toward a new, subterranean vision of sophistication. They're learning what Jill Tracy has known all along--that depravity is most delicious when it's dressed up, and a sharp, elegant dagger can be deadlier than a big dumb chainsaw."
SHIFT MAGAZINE
"Equal parts performance artist, evil MC, filmmaker, musician, and bad-ass icon...Fear not, Jill Tracy is here to deliver us." SAN FRANCISCO
"Stephen King once referred to Shirley Jackson as "the woman who never needed to raise her voice." And this perfectly describes Jill Tracy as well. Through haunting cabaret-style songs with clever and spooky lyrics, Diabolical Streak puts a chill down your spine that the most obscene words and heaviest amounts of gore can never achieve. Jill Tracy's soft and seductive voice is a dark and wonderful gem. Im quite convinced that if Jackson were alive today, this would be her favorite album!" iTUNES
"It's an evocative sound, all right --and Jill Tracy has pretty much cornered the market on the genre. As a friend of mine described it, very Weltschmerz -- and I agreed with him, responding to the onomatopoeic quality of the word. Ultimately, I had to look it up in the dictionary and he was right. Next to the entry Weltschmerz in the dictionary there was a picture of Jill Tracy." CONTRA COSTA TIMES
"eerie, sophisticated and cinematic, Jill Tracy is a gorgeous siren whose voice is filled with menace and mystery."
SF METROPOLITAN
"Jill Tracy has created a timeless collection of songs that ushers the listener into a dark and magical realm. It's not safe here, but you won't be in any hurry to leave. This is a strangely alluring and subtly disturbing album that sneaks up on you, captures you with its unique style and mordant wit, and never quite turns you loose. Jill Tracy finds a compelling sensuality in everything, from the promise of one wicked night to the fiery end of the world. Beneath the breathy vocals and the force and filigree of Tracy's original piano lines lurks cold steel -- the woman has guts to spare, creating something so distinctive amidst the corporate musical mediocrity that's poisoning the culture. Jill Tracy is a wonderful antidote to that poison. Play this one late at night. See if you can find your way out alive."
CD BABY editor's pick
"Like latter-day Marianne Faithfull and Marlene Dietrich, Jill Tracy knows her ouevre and her audience- it would appear she lives the life of which she sings and isn't just playing dress up (her wan visage would fit nicely onto one of Tim Burton's storyboards). Though it's been suggested she hints at everything from Eric Satie to the Cure, with her dark parlour piano and a voice that slays as soon as it soothes, Tracy doesn't really sound like anyone but herself- though she might just be who Marilyn Manson turns into when he grows up." ALL-MUSIC GUIDE
"the femme fatale for the thinking man" SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Jill Tracy’s always been one of our faves; a gothic glamour girl who tickles the ivories like bones, and sings dashing ditties about all our favorite themes—torture, poison, the apocalypse, the hopeless nature of love, the sweetness of revenge. She’s the swellest siren this side of the stygian divide, and her hypnotic allure is as yet unmatched by mere mortals." SF BAY GUARDIAN
Jill Tracy named "BEST OF THE BAY"
"There's just something about the inimitable Jill Tracy that makes us swoon like a passel of naive gothic horror heroines in too-tight corsets. Is it her husky midnight lover's croon, her deceptively delicate visage, her vintage sensibilities? Who else could have written the definitive elegy on the "fine art of poisoning," composed a hauntingly lush live score for F.W. Murnau's classic silent film Nosferatu, joined forces with that merry band of bloodthirsty malcontents, Thrillpeddlers, and still somehow remain a shining beacon of almost beatific grace? Part tough-as-nails film fatale, part funeral parlor pianist, Tracy manages to adopt many facades yet remain ever and only herself — a precarious and delicious balancing act. Her newest CD, The Bittersweet Constrain, glides the gamut from gloom to glamour, encapsulating her haunted highness at her beguiling best. " SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN, Best of the Bay awards issue 2008
The Bittersweet Constrain is unveiled! Tell the WORLD!
Praise for the new CD:
"Few things are finer than drowning in anticipation for a new album -- having that album arrive and, most importantly, having that album more than satisfy said anticipation. The Bittersweet Constrain is wonderfully dark, mischievous and mesmerizing... twilight tales of spurned love, untimely ends and thoughts lost in the shadows, slowly creeping unseen and meaning to not merely embrace, but drag us down into those oh-so-wrong exalted states. What a bloody good record." L'ENNUI MÉLODIEUX
"More noir than cabaret, Jill Tracy's The Bittersweet Constrain is a mesmerizing example of a musical endeavor that lives and breathes its own atmosphere. Like a trip down the back alleys of a metropolis in decline, you never know where the album is taking you; like an audio flaneur, you may find yourself strolling by the scene of a crime ("Room 19"), finding decadent delight in Faustian bargains ("Sell My Soul"), or becoming obsessed with fatal longing ("In Between Shades"). By turns seductive, dangerous, and knowing, Tracy's voice is pure chanteuse, irresistible even in the face of the beckoning downward spiral. Colored lightly in the hues of torch song and morbid nightclub songbird, the album takes its time to unfold, lulling you with waves of dissolute dreams as it subtly pulls you under the tide. Backed by her own tenebrous piano and a host of musicians dubbed The Malcontent Orchestra, The Bittersweet Constrain is a very dark album that avoids unnecessary bleakness. Though the record contains paeans to the barbarity of torture devices and other metaphoric references to the torments of love and lust, the raw emotional hunger of Tracy's voice indicates that the agony of "the bittersweet constrain" is, inevitably, all we have. A downbeat ending fit for the rain-drenched, black-and-white conclusion of a noir thriller to be sure, but with music as compelling as this, it is a proposition difficult to argue against." LIAR SOCIETY
__________________________________________________________________ Order The Bittersweet Constrain today from our dear friends at Projekt and CD Baby. You will also find the album on Amazon, iTunes and most online retailers. They carry Jill Tracy's other titles too.
Jill Tracy cover story in SF Chronicle's Entertainment Magazine, 96 Hours.
Jill Tracy feature in China's largest rock music magazine.
From RE/Search Publications:
"It's nice to have discovered another artist of depth and substance, especially in an age where it's easy to feel that almost none still exist... Jill Tracy: "the elegant side of the netherworld" --maybe "netherworld" has replaced "underground" now. No wonder (Jello) Biafra had raved to me about her. The new music of the future will give us history lessons, and restore to us our lost authentic emotionality, in an age which J.G. Ballard has described as "the death of affect." The death of authentic emotionality and emotional response, indeed... NOT YET - not as long as a handful of people like Jill Tracy, Jello Biafra, Nick Cave, Henry Rollins, and Lydia Lunch keep "kicking against the pri-cks" (to paraphrase Shakespeare). And handing us reasons to still keep living and deciphering what we really feel..." V.Vale, RE/Search Publications (click to read full story)
From Big Top Magazine:
"Since the first time Jill Tracy's seductively smoky voice sent such a delicious shiver down my spine, she has been with me, in the deepest pain I have ever felt, and the greatest joy. What she creates has something sacred inside of it, a gift that so few others have to offer.
In her music, in the words she sings, you will find what you need to make you whole. Somehow, she is every perfect book I have read, everything I wanted to portray in each word I have written. Jill Tracy, for me, ventures far beyond everything I think I could be. Long before I ever met her, I could create so many beautiful worlds that made sense, when nothing else did. In each tragedy that I didn’t think I could make it out of, she was there. In each small triumph, I found something different in the same song. Somehow, it just makes sense." kSea Flux, editor Big Top Magazine
onstage in Victoria, British Columbia (photo by Dani Boynton)
onstage in San Francisco (photo by Patrick McCracken)
(photo by Eric Gillet)
About JILL TRACY:
Jill Tracy is both villainess and heroine of her own musical netherworld. The San Francisco-based artist has garnered multiple awards and a devoted following for her evocative cinematic music, sophisticated lyrics, old-world glamour, and curious passion for strange tales.
Hailed by countless critics as a “femme fatale for the thinking man,” Jill Tracy was described by NPR's All Things Considered as "utterly intriguing... luring you into a magical kingdom solely of her creation." LA Weekly calls her "very distinctive and exciting."
As a youngster, Jill Tracy was drawn to classic suspense, film noir, and horror movie scores, which she cites today as some of her strongest influences. These passions are evident in her unusually cinematic performance style. Virtually self taught, her singular blend of dark, dreamy flourishes, hypnotic grooves and classical-cum-parlour piano conjures up shades of another era, but at the same time, the sound is shockingly new. She is as much Nick Cave as she is Erik Satie. As much David Bowie as she is Mata Hari. As much Bernard Herrmann as she is Robert Smith of The Cure.
"There's something otherworldly about Jill Tracy," writes the Santa Cruz Metro. "She has a poise, finesse and enigmatic quality rarely seen in live performance--she effortlessly floats above the fray."
Jill Tracy combines elegance and intellect with a mesmerizing flair. And with her trademark voice of cut-velvet smoke, she reveals a talent for making rather unsettling subjects remarkably alluring.
Tales of medieval torture devices, safety coffins, suicides, and lusty murderous obsessions mingle with exquisite songs of lost loves and tarnished passions. Tracy's affinity for macabre history and science, has included resurrecting classic Grand Guignol stage plays from the 1920's-- collaborating with San Francisco's theatre troupe Thrillpeddlers, and well-known historians like UC Berkeley's Mel Gordon (Voluptuous Panic.)
Backed by an alluring panoply of strings, woodwinds, drums and percussion, (Tracy affectionately refers to them as The Malcontent Orchestra) songs from her album Diabolical Streak have appeared in movies and compilations, in addition to winning the SIBL international grand prize for songwriting, and two California Music Award nominations. The track "Evil Night Together" has not only been adopted as theme song for nouveau burlesque and bellydance troupes around the globe, but also is featured on Projekt's A Dark Cabaret, and recently on the CBS hit TV show NAVY NCIS, the BBC series Jekyll, LifeTime television, and numerous independent films.
Jill Tracy and The Malcontent Orchestra's beloved original score to F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent vampire classic Nosferatu found the band touring Northern California theatres during Halloween season for five consecutive years to manic sell-out crowds. The 2002 live CD Into the Land of Phantoms contains selections from the Nosferatu score.
"The Fine Art of Poisoning" was developed into an animated short in 2003, a collaboration with Bay Area visual artist Bill Domonkos. The film has garnered well over 30 film festival awards internationally, including Best Experimental Film in the New Orleans Film Festival as well as Best Music Video in both the Chicago and Seattle International Film Festivals.
Her latest (and fourth) album, The Bittersweet Constrain, has a heavier, cinematic sonic edge with the addition of exotic instruments such as the sarod, harmonium, and seldom-seen Chapman Stick. The recording also features master percussionist Randy Odell, horn player Ralph Carney (Tom Waits/B52's), cellist Erica Mulkey (Rasputina/Unwoman), and violinist Tony Cross (Tarentel).
Produced by Alex Nahas (John Vanderslice/Zoe Keating/LaughingStock), The Bittersweet Constrain has been described by the press as "devastatingly beautiful."
Domonkos served as art director/graphic designer for The Bittersweet Constrain. The CD packaging features Jill Tracy portraiture by acclaimed surrealist photographer Michael Garlington, known for his dreamy macabre imagery shot on vintage film stock.
With her forays into film scoring, filmmaking, writing, acting and theatre, Jill Tracy is redefining the image of modern day renaissance artist. But beneath her trademark sound and style lurks cold steel. No corporate-contrived cookie cutter blandness here. She is refreshing proof that smart... is sexy.
thanks for the add; thanks for the nice music, lady:)) + "As the devil labours by all means to keep out other things that are good, so to keep out of the heart as much as in him lies, the thoughts of passing from this life into another world; for he knows if he can but keep them from the serious thoughts of death, he shall the more easily keep them in their sins."- John Bunyan (puritan divine) + God bless You
I am fond of the new profile photo. You resemble a bit Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond from "Sunset Boulevard." In response to the fellow who mentioned absinthe, he is not the only one here who is an afficionado of the stuff; so am I. Must exercise caution, however. Excessive fondness for that elixir contributed to poor Oscar Wilde's early demise.
You're the only other person on my friends page who likes Absinthe. I wanted to suggest to try Versinthe if you can find it. I discovered it out in France last summer and it's really good. The difference between Versinthe and the fake stuff (Charlie Manson absinthe et ceterra) is night and day... the fake stuff tastes like drinking poison!
Comme si tu étais en retard sur la vie, tu te mange les doigts en grognant ! Reviens! Reviens et dis-moi Dis-moi que ton cœur a la chair de poule, qu’il n’est que matière à ronger Qu’en fin de compte il n’y a que ça de vrai ? Tu marches, déambules, trébuche, te relève et retombe… Dans ton jardin est-il tombé un ange ? Quand tu l’as aperçu gisait il sur la terre, ses ailes brisées, éclatées sur tes peurs ? Ou n’était-ce qu’une pluie rageuse de coups du sort ? ThanX and welcome...
Sweet and bleeding nights Thanks Jill Tracy for the Add I love your music, motivates my dark neurons for writing darks sonnets at night under the influence of your sweet voice
For my first trip to America, my memory keeps the focus of your show, Dark elegant with humor of Berlin cabaret. also delighted to met you and I am delighted to see you again.
Hi Jill! Thanks for the add! Please check out some of the jewelry, sculptures and guitars that I make and leave me a picture comment or two! www.myspace.com/john_blackwing I hope you'll have a chance to listen to my band, send us a friend request and let us know what you think! www.thunderrider.com www.myspace.com/thunderrider1 Buy our CD at: http://cdbaby.com/cd/thunderrider http://cdbaby.com/cd/thunderrider2 Cheers from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, John Blackwing Thunder Rider
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