Album Notes

Three Stars for "Home Recordings" EP from "Where's the Trousers"

Lady Lazarus, Home Recordings EP ***
"California’s Melissa Ann Sweat hasn’t long considered herself a musician but she’s been involved in artistic pursuits – writing, drawing and painting – since childhood. Playing keyboard, glockenspiel, accordion and ‘found instruments’ on this debut EP from her Sylvia Plath-derived alter ego, her musical naivety is well disguised. Sweat makes a convincing stab at Karen O channelling PJ Harvey, resulting in a consistently interesting and complex collection of songs.

Relationships pepper this personal record, with Sweat looking for a lover on ‘Bones’ and waving goodbye to another on ‘My Dear Man (Unrequited)’. There’s no hint of sentimentality though, more thoughtful introspection and an appetite for all life has to offer, both good and bad. Highlight ‘Master & Servant’ is not the Depeche Mode cover you might expect but a simultaneously charming yet terrifying original (“Lately the devil’s been talking to me / he’s been saying I’m some woman I’d rather not be”). The minimal arrangements and work-in-progress production affords a sense of immediacy that might have been lost beneath a studio polish. While at times the lo-fi sound can get frustrating, Sweat paces through these seven tracks in under 15 minutes and all are release-worthy compositions."

-Richard Steele
http://wearsthetrousers.com/2009/11/24/sounding-off-november-2009-iii/

Additional News & Notes:
While living in San Francisco in 2008, Melissa wrote and recorded the songs that would become "Home Recordings," her first release, on a four-track tape recorder in her studio apartment. In May 2009, she self-released the handmade EP on her label, Apartment Life Records, and has since been playing live shows in and around her home in the Bay Area and Northern California.

More information and new songs available for listening at http://www.myspace.com/ladylazarusintheory.