North Bay Bohemian

01.09.08-01.15.08

TREBLE END

Joni Davis' unconventional songwriting

Driving home from Petaluma late at night in lastweek's rainstorm, I flipped on the radio in hopes of finding some rhythm to compete with the batting of the windshield wipers. What I got instead was the voice of Joni Davis: a low, ominous sound that creeps alongside a spare piano in an artistic evocation of nature's power. As the winds around me ravaged the county, as trees collapsed and power lines failed, I realized that the songs from Davis' new album, A Bird's Heart, were exactly what I was looking for.

I picked up the album the next day, and if it's still storming by press time, I wholeheartedly suggest it for those languorous nights spent shuttered in a cold house. The title track opens with an instrumental passage in the construct of Bill Evans' "Peace Piece"-two chords on the left hand, meandering tone clusters on the right-until Davis' husky, bluesy voice comes in, delivering a poetic assessment of her own heart.

It's this sort of unconventional songwriting that will inevitably draw comparisons to PJ Harvey's latest all-piano album White Chalk (Davis also cites Bill Callahan and Will Oldham, themselves adept at strange song structures, as influences). The most captivating song on the album, "A Tear for Maria," is about as conventional as a song with a musical saw solo can get; in three verses, it manages to exude a deep sense of loss without telling exactly what happened to its title character. "I have your picture right on top of my piano," she sings, "On the treble end, where my right hand goes," and though we've never met Maria, it's impossible for us not to wonder, why the treble end?

Like Jolie Holland, Joni Davis is able to distill folk music, carnival music, jazz and balladry into something new and strange. A Bird's Heart is a long, slow record. It would be great to see her form a band and kick out the jams, since her voice could surely sing the hell out of the Motown songbook-but for now, it's just the ticket until the sun comes back out.

Joni Davis celebrates the release of A Bird's Heart with a free performance on Thursday, Jan. 10, at the Last Record Store, 1899-A Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. 6pm. Free. 707.525.1963.

Gabe Meline