Wonderful, dark , delicious music! Lo-fi electronica gives the songs a sort of rough, but hypnotizing rhythm...And Terami's voice is truly incomparable! Magnetic journey through the land of a magnetic soul.

The evolution of an artist is something that I sometimes tend to grow wary of and bored with kind of easily only because sometimes it seems like artists lately tend to take the easy way out of making a cd. It's no longer about the songs, it's about marketing. ANYWAY...this is not the case with Terami Hirsch. Every step she takes is something intensly powerful. I've had the opportunity of hearing her first cd which was such a breath of fresh air from what I'd been listening to around that time... Now we have her second cd "To the Bone" and we have Terami treading new ground but still keeping a solid base on what she delivered with "All Girl Band". Terami isn't pretending to be what she isn't, she isn't hiding behind these "techno-ish" beats, she's letting them enhance her songs. The song writing is what gives this album the final punch it needs to be a near masterpiece. It's hard to pinpoint a peak in this recording because from the very beginning it grabs you and never lets go. "The Breathing" is something everyone should experience. I look forward to experiencing everything Terami wishes to give to us in the future... for now, we have "To the Bone" and that could keep me in bliss for years.

Terami's second album is decidedly different from her first studio release, All Girl Band. And for good reason -- part of Terami's goal for this CD was to achieve a different level of storytelling, inventing characters and relationships. An early concept for the album was seeing the world through herself as a ghost; it is still seen in songs like "Stained" ("on the chair is a stain that I left there, it remains unseen by you") and "Raising the Dead" ("you think you see an idea of life inside her, but buried deep she sleeps"). However, this concept was abandoned and so other emotions and situations are allowed to be fleshed out. There is introspection on the album ("Boxes," "Everybody [Inside This Skin]"), but not to the degree of AGB; it instead proves to be mainly a relationship album. "Fire" is a relationship burning to the ground, leaving smoldering passion after the betrayal ("I will always hold this heat for you"). "The Breathing" explores a smothering relationship, and the escape ("a good girl knows her place, keeps her head low underwater... I know the sign of a good time, I know because it hurts, now I want to get out of here"). We are gratefully given snippets of a happy relationship that nevertheless requires room to breathe in "Until You" ("how little I believed, until now, until you... so give me air and I'll be fine"). It's clear that the idea of one's life being altered and affected by the close presence of another has in fact deeply affected the songs. The album also shows Terami's movement in a different direction musically. The songs rely more on percussion and synthetic beats (care of Kevin Benson) than in her previous releases, and these elements create a different sort of feeling. No longer are we peeking into Terami's bedroom door, peering into her diary. This is not such a raw production. That doesn't discount her previous style, but it certainly adds a new level of depth and emotion. Terami is able to tap into darker themes such as co-dependency and betrayal, and yet also give the highs in relationships equal validity. Overall, the album is excellent, and the collaboration between Terami and Kevin to weave new musical paths is both exciting and inspiring.

12 soothingly beautiful songs. Beautiful "orchestration". Interesting lyrics. Like balsam for my soul (a norwegian saying). Too bad I havent discovered her before now. Grows every time I listen to this cd. I want more.