rachel, jeff stuart saltzman, ben landsverk, john stewart, arthur parker, chris robley, gayle neuman, phil neuman.
Influences
Randy Newman, Lynda Barry, Olympia Binewski, Eeyore, discomfort, Fruko!, Elliott Smith, Annie Ross, Betty White, Freddie Mercury, teevee, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Sheri S. Tepper, Ron Burgundy, Shaun Tan, crossword puzzles, Schutz, Jabbawockeez, Ramblin' Rod, Rusty Nails, morbid curiosity, Monteverdi, Rogers & Clark, Larry David, Stanislaw Lem, Burt Bacharach, psoriasis, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Leonard Pitts Jr., Dorothea Lange, winter daphne, Majid Majidi, Stevie Wonder, Remedios Varo, Charles Ives, a melancholy disposition, Strindberg & Helium, Little Lulu, La Presion, Hugo Distler, Star Trek, Nichols & May, Nikola Tesla, obituaries, Elly Ameling, Gloria Steinem, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Rachel Carson, Marvel Comics, Argh!Yle! (DC), Joss Whedon, BBC costume dramas, Bela Bartok, Tom Jones, Corin Redgrave, Fred Astaire, peevishness, Ann & Nancy Wilson, Randy Cohen, Carolyn See, books, The Beatles, Clara Rockmore, Deerhoof, Jane Austen, iconoclasm, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Ann Evans, a nervous breakdown, Goodwill, Shane MacGowan, Elinor Lipman, isolation, Netherlandish painters, Planet Unicorn, Amanda Plummer, Bobby Hill, Fletcher Hanks, movies, Albert Brooks, Niatia Jessica Kirkland, Benjamin Britten, Barbara Mertz, Kip Dynamite, outside, Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant, Helen Thomas, The Daily Show, Samuel Barber, The Colbert Report, a cursed soft hide, my husband Jay, my sister Katie, friends, haters, my cat Rosie, the absurd and beautiful world.
Sounds Like
a work in progress.
SOME PAST SHOWS
please note upcoming shows above to the right!
June 7, 2009
Mississippi Studios
CD Release for Susan Storm's Ugly Sister
w/ Ages and Leigh Marble
June 6, 2009
Live on KBOO's The Outside World
March 20, 2009
The Press Club
February 26, 2009
Rotture
w/ Sophe Lux and Kaitlyn ni Donovan
January 24, 2009
The Press Club
December 3, 2008
WORKS @ The Old Church
w/ Chris Robley & Boy Eats Drum Machine
November 21, 2008
Raven & Finch
[Nov. 2-16 touring w/ Fear of Heights]
October 29, 2008
The Doug Fir
w/ Brothers Young & Isolade
October 18, 2008
The Waypost
w/ Leigh Marble & Ali Wesley
(FALL CREATURES TOUR: Rachel trio)
September 19, 2008
Luckey's, Eugene, OR
September 20, 2008
Mama Buzz, Oakland CA
September 21, 2008
Monterey Live, Monterey, CA
(PAST SHOW: Rachel + band)
September 9, 2008
Musicfest NW
In Music We Trust Showcase
Slabtown
(PAST SHOW: Rachel trio)
August 23, 2008
Dante's
Jeremy Wilson Benefit
(PAST SHOW: Rachel + band)
Doug Fir Lounge
June 19, 2008
Rachel Taylor Brown + Band
Sophe Lux
Grey Anne
(PAST SHOW: Rachel + band)
Black Forest
June 12
(PAST SHOW: Rachel trio)
Mississippi Studios
May 24, 2008
True Stories--courtenay hameister, jim brunberg, mark acito, chelsea cain, stacy bolt, scott poole, rachel taylor brown
RACHEL TAYLOR BROWN: Half Hours with the Lower Creatures
Supporting the USA and fighting terrorism at Hot Dog on a Stick.
RACHEL TAYLOR BROWN: 7 Small Winter Songs
Alternative Christmas Carols for the Post-Modern Holidays.
RACHEL TAYLOR BROWN: Ormolu
Icarus's poor legs stick out of the placid pretty sea.
RACHEL TAYLOR BROWN: Jonah Days
"...the blurred line between dream and waking." dave mazza, the portland alliance
RACHEL TAYLOR BROWN: Do Not Stare
"...thoughtful music for the thinking person." s.p. clarke/two louies
"Brown’s arrangement and vocal performance is brilliant, emphasizing her character’s extreme discomfort and ethical conflict, as well as projecting a sort of sullen placidity that is periodically interrupted by tiny outbursts of simultaneous rage, angst and guilt." matthew perpetua, fluxblog
"Brown’s discography is packed with gems, from the otherworldly ballads of 2006’s Ormolu to the key-changing choral pop of her 2001 solo debut, Do Not Stare. But the discs themselves are so eclectic and unpredictable that describing Brown’s catalog demands another word. Weird, it turns out, is an easy one. Brown’s latest full-length, Susan Storm’s Ugly Sister and Other Saints and Superheroes, is one of her weirder ideas. But the loose concept album’s songs are is engaging both musically and thematically, from a Nine Inch Nails-sounding fetishization of St. Fina’s self-inflicted misery to an operatic and surprisingly sympathetic look at Galactus, the world-eating giant from the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer comics. It turns out when Brown, who says she doesn’t actually listen to much music, follows her own muse wholeheartedly, the resulting material is more than just listenable, it’s fascinating. And yeah, maybe a little weird, too." casey jarman, willamette week
"The brilliance of her music is that piano-based songwriting can often times be formulaic, trite and uninspiring, and what she has done for four consecutive albums is anything but. Her music is daring, fearless and chilling, and even sometimes catchy. Aided by longtime friend and co-producer Jeff Stuart Saltzman (Stephen Malkmus, Sleater Kinney, Menomena), Susan Storm is a refreshing and welcome listen and reveals a cerebral, free-thinking talent that isn't afraid to take chances and stir things up a bit. Somewhere, somehow John Lennon is smiling." gregory robson, absolute punk
Living in an old house in SE Portland with her beloved husband, Jay, Rachel makes sometimes disturbing yet ultimately sensible songs, mostly on the piano. She’s not a summer-lover and avoids the sun except on cool to cold days. She reads a lot and watches too much tv, and likes to meet strange felines on late night neighborhood walks.
She used to get out a lot more but worried frequently about going crazy. Then she had a nervous breakdown and was a hermit for about 8 years, during which she wrote a lot. She writes a lot still.
Her music reflects a love/hate relationship with humanity and persistent awe at the beauty and horror in the world. Trying to capture that sweet and sour thing in a song is what she’s mostly trying to do.
Some have called her a mix of Frankenixon (Sword of Exactly) and Charles Ives, w/ sprinklings of Randy Newman, The Beatles, and Kate Bush. Other names that have come up are Rufus Wainwright, PJ Harvey, American Music Club. A local critic has dubbed her music “creep pop.”
"Brown looked outward at a troubling world and discovered some of the haunting, humorous and ultimately beautiful songs that appear on her latest CD, Half Hours With the Lower Creatures. Brown has a gift for channeling her inner demons into a mesmerizing world of sound...distant, ethereal harmonies, toy pianos, guitars on overdrive and various swirling effects." Robin Hilton, NPR's Second Stage
"It is in simplicity of concept that Brown excels, showcasing her sometimes-transcendent, occasionally reedy voice and her obvious talent for melody and arrangement....she opens with an introductory seven minutes of chanting, lulling her audience into a drunken stupor with the promise of something unusual and unsettling. Mainly she delivers; her sometimes hard rock, sometimes quasi-honky-tonk driven folk musings edge on cabaret and music hall. In short, her album defies categorization." Saundra Sorenson, Venus Zine
"Suppose The Beatles had used "Revolution No. 9" as the lead track on The White Album? You might think about that as you listen to "Hemocult/Care About You," the jarring and eventually disturbing opener to the latest by pop enigma Rachel Taylor Brown. "Half Hours With the Lower Creatures" chases the better angels while railing at false or disappointing idols. Rachel Taylor Brown plays with rhythms, texts and tests her audience. It is an exhausting, but honest and daring set...Brown's daring pays off." Mike Wood, Music Emissions
"It's like a Sergeant Pepper for a decade lacking in hope. The opening track, "Hemocult/I Care About You," may chirp and plink like the soundtrack to a trippy video from the 1960s, but it's the right introduction to the unique sonic world that's encompassed in this plastic disc like a weird playground in a snow globe. Brown and co-producer Jeff Stuart Saltzman have twisted and woven Brown's off-kilter songs (and "songs") into a forceful and intriguing suite that uses some of the conventions of rock and pop - from the Beatles to PJ Harvey, from Laurie Anderson to noise-rock - but in unexpected combinations that somehow always make a kind of sense. ...Rachel Taylor Brown isn't like most singer-songwriters, and Half Hours with the Lower Creatures isn't like most CDs....the poetry of 21st century disillusionment. Just in case you were looking for it." Jon Sobel, Blogcritics Magazine
"A marine biology textbook from the early 20th century inspired Portland singer/songwriter Rachel Taylor Brown to pen her latest breathtaking offering. A fanatic of the works of Vonnegut and Lynda Barry, Half Hours with the Lower Creatures finds Brown at odds with the world within her own element — the storyteller — yet in the end, she manages to paint a stark and brutally honest portrayal of taboo themes such as consumerism, murder, isolation and religion with unflinching valiancy. With a vocal delivery on par with the fiery barks of Kate Bush and soft lilts of Eleanor Friedberger...the one spirit that Brown channels throughout the album’s breath is Paul McCartney’s. During the rocking “Abraham and Isaac,” one can almost hear McCartney’s warble slice through the roar of the guitar solo, or the twosome sitting side-by-side at the piano during “Another Dead Solider in Fallujah.” However, unlike the Englishman, Brown is unafraid to saturate her pop songs in gloom-and-doom, defying the belief that a sad pop song can’t be a catchy one." Chris Sabbath, West Coast Performer Magazine
"Regina Spektor + The Beatles (White Album) + Kate Bush = Rachel Taylor Brown.
Rachel Taylor Brown starts you off with the assurance, “You’re alright./ This will only hurt a bit,” and then proceeds to take your senses for one helluva ride. This album features everything from a mini rock-opera (“Abraham and Isaac”), to “Hemocult”: seven minutes of white noise taken from a mall, layered together with ethereal vocals and toy piano accompaniment. Light and bouncy melodies and haunting ballads offset strikingly political and spiritual themes so that the album never feels weighed down, or comes across as preachy. Brown has put together a bold, highly intelligent album that no one, musician or poet, should miss." Kat Kellermeyer, SLUG Magazine
"I was spellbound by the new album by Rachel Taylor Brown, a Portland, Ore., singer/songwriter who's a true original. Brown's not a typical singer/songwriter on any level. These songs are eccentric, often fractured bits of verse punctuated by strange sounds and haunting background vocals. Taylor's vision (is) rendered with intimacy, clarity and a good dollop of uncommon imagination. Half Hours is truly a fascinating record, probably the most original and provocative song cycle released by a woman in the U.S. so far this year."
Kevin Renick, Playback:STL
"Though not one of Portland’s widely known talents (yet), singer/songwriter/pianist Rachel Taylor Brown can certainly lay claim to one of the city’s most imaginative musical minds. Her sparse, 2006 mini-album Ormolu firmly established a fruitful and satisfying musical relationship with producer Jeff Stuart Saltzman (Sleater Kinney, Stephen Malkmus). Half Hours with the Lower Creatures takes a bold step forward in Brown’s musical arc, utilizing the Fear of Heights band and pushing them into some stunning prog-like arrangements, with pointed lyrics questioning our “higher” moral authority.... It’s an album that is all too easy to obsess over, chock full of headphone moments and subtle-yet-stunning church-like washes of vocals providing intentional juxtaposition to pointed lines... It connects on that visceral level and is so musically well-thought-out, one wonders just where Rachel’s musical journey will lead next."
Michael Fortes, Bullz-eye.com Bullz-eye.com/Interview
"Brown plays with mod-popper Chris Robley in local outfits the Sort-Ofs and the Fear of Heights, but her solo work doesn’t make a listener’s job easy. It defies genre classifications or comparisons to other artists; her lyrics often elude rational understanding—heck, she’s just plain strange. Silly love songs these ain’t. “Hemocult” shares its name with Hemoccult, a cancer test detecting (in the words of its manufacturer) “occult blood in the stool.” From that point, Brown sifts through our culture’s shit, wondering why it’s so damn ill. “Passion” amounts to a musical review of Mel Gibson’s infamous torture-porn Bible epic and might be Brown’s first truly great composition, rivaling Terry Allen’s “Dogwood Tree” in milking lyrical profundity from the crucifixion. Brown’s music (pretty as it sometimes is) doesn’t make for “easy listening.” She never lets herself get away with easy writing, arranging, playing or singing. Life is hard; art imitates life; and this is art as hard—and ultimately rewarding—as life itself." Jeff Rosenberg, Willamette Week
"A complex and compelling orchestral pop album that bears traces of both Kate Bush's ethereal explorations and the piano-driven emotional torque of Tori Amos. But Brown successfully translates her personal ambivalence about the world into a wondrous work that's distinctly her own." John Chandler, Portland Monthly Magazine
"Brown's chamber-arena tunes--think Tori Amos fronting early Genesis--embody subject matter serious and disquieting. Similar to Laura Nyro, Mia Doi Todd or Kate Bush, Brown layers ashen lyrical issues with astute arrangements, utilizing everything from ringing telephones to Bach-like trimmings. Grade: A."
Doug Simpson, Campus Circle
"Rachel Taylor Brown tramples on the weeds of cliche and anything else that could cloud her paradise and leaves nothing but a beautiful album. Make sense? Buy it."
Rick Barnett, Synthesis Weekly
"Half Hours with the Lower Creatures is not an album for the ultra-religious, who would probably call it blasphemous, and Rachel Taylor Brown a minion of the devil. This is a beautiful album on the outside, but incredibly disturbing lyrically. It’s not an easy listen, but it does cause you to think. Anything that can make you think about and study ideas that have been taken for granted for generations needs to be heard, if for nothing else, to solidify what you believe, regardless of what that is."
Tim Wardyn, Ink 19
"Brown covers a lot of ground, but she manages to do it with control and poise throughout. Hooks on either the piano or the guitar set the base for a full band performance track to track that is tight and aggressive. From the beginning, Brown shows that there are few boundaries to her work, and within that wide space she has nearly universal strength...you'll be in for a helluva album. Who knew?" Dan Shvartsman, 30MUSIC.com
"...permeated with an aching honesty. A singer, songwriter and pianist, Brown makes music that reaches into sometimes painful parts of the human heart for its power with an emotional forthrightness some artists struggle all their lives to achieve. A tremendously accomplished album, with a depth of craft underscoring Brown's musicianship. It is, in other words, the real deal." Luciana Lopez/The Oregonian
"If you spend a lot of time reviewing local music, you hear a lot of the Chris Cornell guy singing over a “dunh dunh dunh!” guitar line, or those screamer-Kinney female vocalist clones, or the keyboard duos that Just! Want! Dancing! As such, when something different comes along, it merits a further look. So, what exactly is this warbling-but-better-than-that beautiful thing that has landed in my mailbox today? Why, it’s Rachel Taylor Brown’s new album, Half Hours With the Lower Creatures! The vampy piano, quiet-loud dynamics, and bass instrumentation recalls Ben Folds Five, especially in the beginning and ending sections of “Mette in Madagascar,” when the band bounces along, propelling the song. I bet her music will fill the room at Mississippi Studios, and I hope I can make it out." hardlikealgebra.com
"Anyone who’s ever seen a Tim Burton movie knows it’s possible to find the beautiful in the macabre. Local songstress Rachel Taylor Brown does just that on her gorgeous new album, her clear, expressive voice drawing forth the sunshine in material that’s lyrically dark and musically complex. It’s on tracks like the opener and “This Is a Song,” however, that Taylor Brown sends shivers down the spine. The voices in her head may be disturbing, but she’s managed to imbue them with enough of a sense of wonder to make them fascinating." Barbara Mitchell/The Portland Tribune
"Brown realizes that there are plenty of normal albums for normal people already crowding the bins at the local record store. To borrow from Monty Python, Half Hours With the Lower Creatures is "something completely different," odd but intriguing, challenging but never boring, just as its cover suggests." All Music Guide/review
"If you're the kind of listener that likes things safe and familiar, this disc may be a bit much for you. Rather than create predictable music, Brown lets her music take her all over the place. Some of the tracks on this album are surprisingly complex and orchestrated (readers might want to take note of the fact that many unorthodox instruments were used in recording these tracks). There's a lot to take in here...as Rachel proves she is much more than a mere flash in the pan. Her music may be too smart for the average listener...but our guess is that more refined fans will find a lot to love here. Cool inviting progressive pop tracks include 'Passion,' 'Another Dead Soldier in Fallujah,' 'Vireo,' and 'Love, the Omnichord.' Very mature sounding stuff. (Rating: 5+)" babysue.com/LMNOP
"'Half Hours With the Lower Creatures,' the new release from Portland's Rachel Taylor Brown, opens with ambient noise that slowly builds into an ominous dreamlike pulse. If Ennio Morricone could be convinced to score a nasty slasher film he would do well to come up with something as eerily evocative. It's an appropriate start to the bleak and often harrowing album. Inevitably, Brown's art-pop will receive comparisons to Tori Amos and Regina Spektor, but it more closely resembles Supper's Ready-era Peter Gabriel. "Abraham and Isaac" is representative of the album's ugly beauty. "You always hurt the one you love," she imagines Abraham sighing as he prepares to sacrifice his son." There Stands the Glass
"Brown is the type of songwriter that, regardless of the underlying musical content, delivers song after song of complete and utter fascination... a flourishing singer/songwriter with a future as bright as the sun." ObscureSound.com
"Rachel Taylor Brown's latest album, "Half Hours With the Lower Creatures," is another positively breathtaking album from this musical chameleon. When Brown is not performing her own material, she lends her voice to various classical groups around town, as well as playing keyboards and singing alongside Chris Robley. But it is within her own creative vision that this supremely talented singer/songwriter really blossoms, bringing to mind Vashti Bunyan's roundelays and the furious, dramatic pop of American Music Club." Bob Ham, livepdx.com, 2/14/08
"For those of you not from the Portland area or a regular to my station or currently not residing on planet Earth, Rachel Taylor Brown is the best fucking artist that you've never heard of. PERIOD. And "Half Hours With the Lower Creatures" is perhaps the album of the decade." Mark Collins/wot90s radio
"Rachel Taylor Brown has really outdone herself with 'Half Hours With The Lower Creatures' . If you already love her in 'regular strength' then get ready for her in 'concentrate' because that's exactly what this sounds like. What I hear is an oft quirky-noir vibe with elements reminiscent of The Beatles tucked in here and there." Frank Gualtier, Seven of Eleven
Oh My God! Rachel I didn't know you played with Ben Landsverk! His dad is my old boss (The nicest man in the universe). I'm going to try to go to your gig coming up. The two of you together would be a great show.
gee thanks very much, and you're very welcome. perhaps we could share a stage sometime. yes, the lyric is "triptych[s]". the sentiment is meant as a sort of "trick tip" (see thrasher magazine) for the stunt of living. .m.
Hi, thanks for join my list.
If you had a chance to listen to my music I'd like to thank you. If you haven't yet,let me know later if you liked it.
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José Luis
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