Album Notes

Rae Hering is Nashville’s newest lyrical raconteur. With her raw and sweet-textured voice, salient wit and unique artistry, her sound draws the listener into a procession of color that works on the imagination and begs a deeper listen. Songs from her latest EP Reality Over My Head are melodically compelling, composed with a poet’s intuition for speaking the unspoken. Her stories amuse with imagery, evoking the experience of a carnival rife with childhood memories but wonderful and perplexing enough to hold even the most mature ticket holder captive. All that said, Rae Hering's music suggests she may be a bit more aware to the goings on behind the circus’ curtains despite her musing admission that reality is in fact over her head!

It’s been a while since the heyday of cabaret, but you’d never know it from Rae Hering’s repertoire. She’s been in Nashville for six years, and her musical surroundings have yet to influence her to lean on guitar — jazzy, nimble piano is her thing, and accordion, vibraphone and horns provide accompaniment — or to write songs in linear verse-chorus-verse form. On her debut EP, Reality Over My Head, Hering takes her cues from Kate Bush and Liza Minnelli, unfurling scenes and characters that are intended to be larger than life with vivid, theatrical twists and turns. In “Top Hat Acrobat,” which evokes Astrud Gilberto one minute and Steely Dan the next, she purrs, belts and coos over a suave lounge groove about a fantastical miniature daredevil. That’s a fittingly flexible image for a performer like Hering. --- Jewly Hight, Nashville Scene