Meaghan Burke

Music

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i was a giant

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Released: Mar 23, 2010

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i was a giant
3:57
1,135 plays
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Methadone Friend
4:43
747 plays
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Ones with Loose Lips Sink Ships
3:50
398 plays
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Live Gentlier
2:56
498 plays
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Ditmas
2:07
768 plays

Total Plays: 10,042 / Plays Today: 7See All Featured ►

General Info

Genre: Psychobilly / Regional Mexican / Zouk
Location NYC/Wien, New York, Un
Profile Views: 38492
Last Login: 10/6/2012
Member Since 5/31/2008
Website www.cdbaby.com/cd/MeaghanBurke
Record Label Hunyak Dan
Type of Label Unsigned
Bio
Meaghan Burke is a New York and Vienna-based cellist and singer and songwriter of many hats. Her songs for cello and voice (heard here) cook up a bizarre blend of of contemporary classical, cabaret/chanson, and rock influences. This cello songstress tells tales of such timeless themes as broken hearts, borrowed identities, and bedbugs. Burke's witty, macabre lyrics and heart-rending melodies are buttressed by her chameleon-like cello – as much a character in the musical narrative as Burke's sultry, equally versatile voice. Burke navigates nimbly through the broad range of both her voice and her instrument, never forgetting her dark sense of humor and her uncanny knack for storytelling. Meaghan can also be heard in such wildcat combos as Cheating on New York, (with Rai Benson) a blues-cabaret-self-help two-woman-show chronicling two New York women's struggles in the Big Schnitzel; Rash, a fiery cello-double bass liaison (with Bernd Klug) in which murmurs erupt into spastically explosive grooves which implode on themselves; and Loose Lips Sink Ships, a singer-songwriter collective with the gorgeous songs and voices of Werner Kitzmüller, David Schweighart, Simon Usaty, Mimu, and Matthias Frey. Stay tuned for exciting new New York collaborations!
Members
Meaghan and her cello
Influences
Charlotte Moorman, Cole Porter, Morton Feldman
Sounds Like
Eine Frau, ein Cello, ein Mikrophon und keine Spur von sentimentalem Schöngeist in Sicht. Wenn Meaghan Burke, die zwischen New York und Wien pendelt (Schicksale gibt's), den geckenhaften, beklagenswert mediokren „Hatboy" fragt, ob er sich seinen Hut eigentlich verdient hat, möchte man nicht in seiner Haut stecken. Burkes Cello dröhnt, fräst, schrubbt, scheppert und schnarrt und singt mit ihrer und gegen ihre Stimme, die in eigenwilligen Melodiebögen von beißenden Bettwanzen und den träumerischen Boys der Bohème erzählt, die Ansage ihres Anrufbeantworters intoniert oder ihr Lied über eineN FreundIn auf Methadon mit einer Variation auf Cole Porters „One of Those Things" einleitet. Zugegeben, ob das alles noch Pop ist, darf manbezweifeln. Sagen wir einfach: Es sollte Pop sein. Despite being a native ofNew York, Meaghan Burke is, as a result of living inViennafor a number of years, being asked to represent the city's pop scene at the Popfest Wien free festival. This is the warm-up and it is clear that the anomaly is two-fold: her being merely an adopted daughter, but also that the music she makes is only on the barest of nodding terms with 'pop'. That said there are hi-jinks in her business, an embroidered, fresh-faced charm; the manner in which she beams, sporting the ivory being a facial equivalent of Doris Day greeting the day's business with a windmill slap of a thigh. Yet she marries this innocence with regular dips into Diamanda Galas style melodrama, the voice flitting and swooping like a swallow, elasticising from trills to treacle....Meaghan Burke's singing style feels much more natural, and it thus follows that her lyrics about bed bugs and such pass under the radar of irritation. What might not beat the radar for some listeners is that this is very much a voice and cello performance, with no looping and no gradation. There is not even a reliance on heavy bowing to layer a warming underbelly, the neck of her instrument more often plucked or beaten. Yet despite this plain set-up, the sound is agile and lively, moving across smoky blues, nimble jazz and scattergun torch song and back with barely a blink. -Vanity Project fanzine