ALBUMS
I hope you enjoy my music!
Each album is an exercise in curiosity; at exploring whatever music comes to me, and whatever I am inspired by at the time - which has led me down interesting paths! It has meant I have enjoyed many years full of discoveries small & large: about music, about touring & performing, about creative expression, collaboration, and about being true to yourself. I am truly thankful for this journey, and for everyone who is a part of it..
I hope you will join me!
All music by Nerissa Campbell / Crooked Mouth Music
Follow & Support music on Bandcamp
Cricket, Live at The Jazz Gallery, NYC 2020
Cricket is a new project by singer-songwriter, improviser, and producer Nerissa Campbell. It features some of her intimate songs, old & new, woven in an atmospheric dreamscape that seems it would be as comfortable living in a film score as it is on stage in a New York City jazz club.
Performed live with Fabian Almazan on piano & electronics, and Nerissa on vocals, guitar & electronics the album opens with a literary reading by Jared Hohl, whose piece A Ripe Descent was the inspiration for the opening song Descent. What follows is 50 minutes of Campbell & Almazan exploring the sonic space of Campbell’s songs as one piece, with both intricate and expansive improvisations that entwine each song with the next, breathing a new cohesiveness and direction to two decades of original material.
Cricket is available in digital only format and only via Bandcamp. For a limited time it will be offered as a pay-what-you-wish donation.
From Nerissa: “Cricket features my songs woven together as one piece, with improvised interludes between each, in a further attempt to create specific moods and take the listener on a journey through sound, space, & elastic time. I have always had a deep interest in how music makes you feel a certain way, and sometimes more than one way at the same time, and how I might express those qualities sonically- like, how does Billie Holiday make me feel so euphoric & sad at the same time? The Dirty Three so mournful & ecstatic? How can I create those seemingly juxtaposed feelings...and are they that different? I am still learning! I hope wherever this music finds you, it brings you some meditative calm in our collective storm.”
credits
released April 30, 2020
recorded Live at The Jazz Gallery, NYC on July 19,2019
Fabian Almazan - piano, synth, electronics
Nerissa Campbell - vocals, guitar, electronics, composition
Jared Hohl - reads ‘A Ripe Descent’
After The Magic | 2016
Nerissa Campbell’s fourth studio album, After The Magic (Crooked Mouth Music), is a moody dreamscape reminiscent of a literary roman-a-clef. It features Balinese gamelan, a jazz trio, pensive solo piano pieces, and fleeting guitars woven together with Campbell’s melancholy vocals.
The mix of musical genres explore Nerissa's sense cultural belonging and displacement, and create a unique and surprising album. Not easily classified as jazz, singer-songwriter, or traditional Balinese gamelan, and yet subtly all of these things, Campbell's songs use Balinese gamelan gong cycles and modes, lyrical stories, improvisation and jazz harmonies, and non-vocal compositions that combined create a sense of space and breath. Cycling and repeating, ebbing and flowing, the songs of After The Magic inform and are informed by each other.
After The Magic features Gamelan Dharma Swara, Josh Graham (A Storm of Light), Balinese composer and musician Dewa Ketut Alit, and Campbell’s longtime band Desmond White, Matthew Jodrell and Guilhem Flouzat. Campbell received an Australian Arts Council New Works grant for After The Magic.
credits
released March 11, 2016
featuring:
Gamelan Dharma Swara
Dewa Ketut Alit - kendang
Josh Graham - guitar
Desmond White - bass, guitar
Matthew Jodrell - piano
Guilhem Flouzat - drums
Nerissa Campbell - voice, piano, guitar
Blue Shadows | 2013
Campbell knows the truth contains shadows of darkness. So when she sings of these shadows encompassing the emotive range from despair to tenderness, we are pierced with the poignancy of our mere existence. The album reaches its emotional height with the moody and evocative “Leaving N.Y.” Quiet piano and soft brushes on the cymbal, followed by the bass, lays down the foundation for Campbell's sultry croon “After you where do I go?” Campbell and her band capture the struggle, the desperation, and the anguish of all who have come to New York with dreams of artistic freedom, only to find themselves fighting for survival while the dream remains tenuous at best.
If one thinks Blue Shadows is only a melancholic affair, simply listen to “Powder Burn” or “Don’t Look Back” where Campbell’s voice mischievously coos in simple abandon as the upright bass makes it impossible to resist finger snapping. She coolly sings “let those black birds sing” – but I say silence those black birds and turn Campbell's music up all the louder. The recording is pristine and in those silent moments we begin to comprehend that Campbell has given us a complex and unforgettable masterpiece. -from liner notes by Steven Karl
credits
released December 2, 2012
Nerissa Campbell - vocals, compositions
Matthew Jodrell - piano, trumpet
Desmond White - bass
Guilhem Flouzat - drums
Musings Of A Telescopic Tree | 2009
~The Heartfelt Howl, The Whisper of Love~
Nerissa Campbell's music is a fine blend of styles dipped in a smoky beer batter of late night living. There's an easy, swingin' film noir feeling that evokes dark bars and mystery dames and she is wistful and melancholy, like Billie Holiday singing a Nick Cave song. The blues is here, too, but it plays hide and seek with space and sound, creating a depth of feeling beyond the obvious. Musings of a Telescopic Tree has the kind of flow often found on vinyl albums in the sixties and seventies. There is an ebb and flow that unifies the entire recording. - Truncated liner notes by Mark Kirby