Get Into the Act... "Esme Montgomery"
Esme Montgomery never quits when she sings.
She is constantly in motion during her shows. She pushes her arm away from her guitar as if she is ridding herself of a bad memory, or grimaces as she is captured by the spirit of a lyric. “I’m in the moment of what I’m doing, acting it out,” she says.
Montgomery mixes her own tunes with covers by artists ranging from John Lennon and Stevie Wonder to the Flaming Lips and Bjork. She has recorded her tunes on the self-released “A Single Thing.” The songs range from quiet, with only her girlish voice and guitar, to angry-sounding electric punk rock.
No matter what their format, all feature poetic lyrics. “I focus on lyrics a lot,” she says. “Something that’s in my head for a while will develop. There are a lot of personal reflections about how people relate to each other.”
Many of the songs on her CD are experimental, like “Fields,” which has her faraway sounding voice accompanied by a slow electric guitar. “That one was done at my apartment,” she says, “I put the microphone out of the window and used a lot of reverb.”
Montgomery has only lived in Bethlehem for three months since moving here from Manhattan. “This is a cool music scene,” she says. “It is too expensive to do music in Manhattan. Here I can actually have a practice room and a car.”
Montgomery is also the lead singer for the band Dark Sweet Cherries. Like Montgomery herself, the band has an eclectic sound that includes elements of garage, punk, and pop. This month they announced that they have finished recording a six-song EP.
Esme Montgomery will open for Astrograss, a Brooklyn-based bluegrass band, May 1 at the Mount Vernon Ale House, 542 Northampton Street, Easton, PA, 10 p.m., no cover, 610-559-5772.
--Dave Howell, 4/04
(This article first appeared in The Morning Call newspaper.)
She is constantly in motion during her shows. She pushes her arm away from her guitar as if she is ridding herself of a bad memory, or grimaces as she is captured by the spirit of a lyric. “I’m in the moment of what I’m doing, acting it out,” she says.
Montgomery mixes her own tunes with covers by artists ranging from John Lennon and Stevie Wonder to the Flaming Lips and Bjork. She has recorded her tunes on the self-released “A Single Thing.” The songs range from quiet, with only her girlish voice and guitar, to angry-sounding electric punk rock.
No matter what their format, all feature poetic lyrics. “I focus on lyrics a lot,” she says. “Something that’s in my head for a while will develop. There are a lot of personal reflections about how people relate to each other.”
Many of the songs on her CD are experimental, like “Fields,” which has her faraway sounding voice accompanied by a slow electric guitar. “That one was done at my apartment,” she says, “I put the microphone out of the window and used a lot of reverb.”
Montgomery has only lived in Bethlehem for three months since moving here from Manhattan. “This is a cool music scene,” she says. “It is too expensive to do music in Manhattan. Here I can actually have a practice room and a car.”
Montgomery is also the lead singer for the band Dark Sweet Cherries. Like Montgomery herself, the band has an eclectic sound that includes elements of garage, punk, and pop. This month they announced that they have finished recording a six-song EP.
Esme Montgomery will open for Astrograss, a Brooklyn-based bluegrass band, May 1 at the Mount Vernon Ale House, 542 Northampton Street, Easton, PA, 10 p.m., no cover, 610-559-5772.
--Dave Howell, 4/04
(This article first appeared in The Morning Call newspaper.)