Sunfair

Malaena Cadiz

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Cat No: CDMSR082

Release Date: 18 March 2016

Label: Misra Records

Packaging Type: Digipak

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 042768776674

Genres: Rock

Description
"It's hard to make a clean escape," Melaena Cadiz admits early on in her new album, Sunfair. But it's been on her mind nonetheless.

The songwriter, long based out of New York City, made a break for the West Coast in 2015. And on Sunfair, she's managed a breakthrough as well. Cadiz has honed her technique and produced her most honest, and brilliant, record yet, showcasing not only her intricate guitar work and swirling vocals, but her evocative storytelling as well.

Sunfair presents Cadiz just as she begins to comprehend and interpret her new surroundings in southern California. She's packed lightly: the record consists largely just of her ethereal voice, her finger-picked guitar, and a bit of tasteful reverb that evokes the barren terrain of the California desert. It's hard not to think of Georgia O'Keeffe here. Just as O'Keeffe's experience in the New York art world affected the way she approached southwestern landscapes, the sound of Sunfair is desolate, but with echos of cosmopolitan sophistication.

A trip to Joshua Tree with her husband earlier in the year sealed the deal for Cadiz; the pace and noise of her past environs (she'd spent time in Seattle and Paris too) had overstayed it's welcome. "Even in the country surrounding those areas there's that deciduous rustle," she explains. The California desert offered something new: silence and simplicity.

Cadiz's previous two albums, though not overdone, featured some bells and whistles: a piano on one song, fiddle on another, percussion on a third. Sunfair is stark by comparison. Here we get Cadiz herself - unadorned but also unencumbered. Through nine tracks, there's rarely more to focus on than her voice and her guitar; that restraint works out favorably.

Cadiz wrestles with geography and culture on a personal level on Sunfair. In "Last Night in My Dream," she relates: "And the TV was warning about storms in the east / said I feel kind of bad I don't care in least / I don't want to go home, I don't want to go, not if you paid me." It's a dream in the literal sense, but also in the sense of a goal. Can I put the past out of my mind as I start this new chapter?

Melaena Cadiz has been through some changes lately. A new baby, a new home across the country from the old. But even as she scales back to a simpler approach to recording - and presents what she calls her most honest record yet - the vulnerability that comes with baring one's deepest feelings doesn't show. Sunfair brims over with confidence and honesty. The voice in Cadiz's throat matches the one in her heart.
Tracklisting