"The Vigilante" has landed... in Toronto!

I got home late today, and there was the package at my door, a two-pack including "April Rising" from 2004 ("Honey" was out of stock when I ordered - damn!)

Now I've been sitting here running through an hour of - without hyperbole - some of the most f*ing amazing music I've ever heard since I don't know when.

Usually CDs have one or two tracks going for them. Not here. "Vigilante" and "April" don't waste a beat of music. Every track is an experience, the way that Alanis Morissette or Savage Garden crafted their albums.

Listening to the two albums side-by-side for the first time is also a revelation. The spare acoustic piano of the 2004 "Jezebel" evolves to the full orchestration of the 2007 version. The lyrical, balladic beauty of a love song like "Embers" contrasts with the paean to destructive love, "Saliva".

I listen to this, and I am both enamoured, as a music lover... and also driven to despair, as a songwriter, that I cannot write anything like this. In poetry, yes, once in a while I've managed to sharpen my knife enough to be able to stab the listener through the heart... but with words and music? "Scissors" is a case in point, in both albums a haunting and horrific ode to obsession: "But you hurt me again so I took my scissors and I cut you out". 

Although her mastery of the piano (self-taught!) is impressive enough, Ariel S. Lee isn't just another Vanessa Carlton. She's Vanessa Carlton with an ice-pick.

To those who have not yet discovered the songs on "Vigilante" or "April Rising", or who have yet to make their acquaintance with Ariel S. Lee: It's time. This is the real thing.
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I love CD Baby because I find all these amazing artists that I wouldn't find any other way.  Ariel is edgy but beautiful and hypnotic.  I can feel her pain right through her music.  I came back here today to pick up the 2nd CD by her.
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Looking for an artist who will tell the cold, harsh truth without trying like crazy to be a self-righteous "punk?"  Enter Ariel S. Lee, a self-taught pianist who acknowledges her own vulnerability ("I bit into the apple and was kicked out of Eden for my treason/It was delicious") but knows that she is certainly no weakling (she can assert, "God, you're such a jerk!" and it isn't just a style statement).

Lee describes "April Rising" as an album that is "full of knives."  Indeed, this album is heated (just take one listen to "Jezebel" or "Twist The Knife"), but it takes a different, more reassuring turn in the song "Come So Far," and sounds almost hopeless at other times ("I'm afraid I came too late to save you.")

All in all, Ariel S. Lee is the real deal.  She has a voice that's strong and effective with just the right amount of grittiness, a piano that she uses to make anger sound beautiful, and a knack for being artistically blunt that gives Alanis a run for her money.
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This cd is amazing.  The vocals are great, and the piano pounding is powerfully awesome.  (My favorite's "Saliva")

ARIEL ROCKS!!!!!!!
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