Performing
Songwriter Sept. 2002
"Julia Macklin is a poet and a lyricist,
penning unstructured verses about the forest, the flowers and falling in and out
of love. Complex time signatures and unusual instrumentation marked by mellotron,
harmonium and lap steel provide the backbone for Macklin’s gentle, melancholic
vocals. Former October Project vocalist Marina Belica provides lovely harmonies,
especially on the Celtic-flavored “So Much Sky” and the languid “Say
Goodbye.” The disc concludes with a haunting, ethereal version of “Eleanor
Rigby.” Ideal staying-in-bed-on-a-rainy-Sunday music. "
Ray
Dorsey - Chaos Realm
Pretty damn good CD here by JULIA MACKLIN, who
while slipping into the seemingly over-crowded woman-singer-songwriter category,
does not do so without making a statement. JULIA has an excellent voice &
she augments this with some very cool songs, a real standout being the intriguing
"Tea With The Dead." This lady's stuff has a vibrancy & life to
it that I like, & also really has her act together as far as sending out updates
on her performance schedule, etc.
http://www.juliamacklin.com
Indie-music.com - Jennifer Layton
As I sat listening to this cool, mystical spell, I kept thinking, "There it is again." That feeling of innocence. That something in every song that appeals to the child in me. I couldn't figure out why I was feeling that way when the lyrics were anything but innocent, but after a while I heard Julia Macklin singing for what was lost:
Do you remember way
back when,
When I was young and my heart could sing with the best of them?
Now tell me a story I haven't heard.
Whether
she sings of anger, searching, or mischievous romantic behavior, her voice uncovers
that same longing in me over and over again. The feeling is enhanced by the intimate,
perfect recording that captures the T's and P's, the sighs and whispers, the trailing
off "ssst" at the end of the word "lost." The production is
so clear that it doesn't just sound like she's singing right here in the room.
It sounds like she's in my head.
Every song has a line somewhere that
I want to hear again. "Fall by the wayside, I dare you," she challenges
in "Mine."
Then there's the musically
ominous and lyrically cryptic "Tea With the Dead":
It's
hard to picture you without the earth,
without the flowers,
and so I picture
you the moon instead.
Your cup is never empty, I spill it out and fill it
up again.
Why can't you even do this one small thing?
Give me a sign and
let me go home,
I can't wait here all night long.
It's you who must speak
first for my tongue is broken.
"Who Said Anything" is another standout. The circular feel of the tempo matches the subject of falling in love, falling away, falling back uncertainly, one person warm and the other cool and then back again.
Macklin writes dreamy, hypnotic spells and sings them in the deceptively sweet voice of nostalgia. These songs are delicate, real, and not very safe. Returning to the present as the CD ends, I'm not sure I want to come back yet.
