Mars Arizona: Press

According to the title of Mars Arizona’s latest release, the current state of affairs in the world is looking rather bleak. Though the album is filled with songs of struggle and sadness, Hello Cruel World is a bright spot on the Americana landscape. The San Francisco-based singer-songwriter duo of Paul Knowles and Nicole Storto manages to find the proverbial silver lining of good music while also conveying an overall sense of global disillusionment. The album’s tasteful musical arrangements and spot-on harmony vocals are complemented by guest appearances from Al Perkins on pedal steel and David Grisman on mandolin. Along with thought-provoking original compositions, the duo also impresses by putting its own unique spin on songs from a broad range of artists including Neil Young (”Time Fades Away”) and T. Rex (”By The Light Of A Magical Moon”).

Well, this is the best title for an album so far this year.  It’s also one of the best we’ve heard so far.  We loved their album from a few years back so we were thrilled when this arrived in the mail.  Recorded mostly in Nashville and featuring David Grisman along with Al Perkins this band means business.  For those who want to start the year off with something fresh this is the place to start.

Mars Arizona
Hello, Cruel World
(Big Barn, 2008)

Mars Arizona is Nicole Storto and Paul Knowles, San Francisco Bay Area singer/songwriters with a firm knowledge of American roots music styles, particularly the kind of old-time, bleary-eyed, pain-in-the-heart country music that never goes out of style with lovers, losers, and boozers. Hello, Cruel World is even more country than 2005’s All Over the Road, with arrangements that combine comfortable down home acoustic picking with a bit of Knowles’s metallic guitar crunch. Knowles and Storto compliment each other vocally like the best country duos; he’s all hard edges and ornery attitude while she’s more pliant and resigned to life’s hard knocks.

“Dirty Town”, a Knowles/Storto collaboration, opens the album with a jaunty arrangement that combines the swing of Texas and Paris with a cynical lyric about conniving preachers and lost, homeless women. Special guest David Grisman contributes a jazzy mandolin solo while local fiddler Alisa Rose expertly weaves her countrypolitan fills in and out of the mix. Storto’s “Earth” is a stately ode to our planet, implicitly lamenting the global disaster we seem to be headed for. Knowles plays understated Gospel piano and bluesy electric guitar, while Storto turns in a hopeless, bemused vocal.

 

Storto’s “Good to be Lucky” is another vision of doom, delivered with a vocal full of gentle irony. Knowles’ stinging slide guitar and Al Perkins’s (Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band) solemn pedal steel fills add to the tune’s desolate aura. Knowles’s “Landscape (for NOLA)” sustains the troubled mood with a song that likens national disaster with the personal pain of lost love. Knowles sings with the broken voice of a desperate lover while Perkins’s pedal steel compliments the song’s bleak lyrics. “Don’t Get Too Comfortable” is so full of depression and desperation that it’s actually funny. Storto and Knowles sound smug and gleeful as they toss their warnings about looming death and ecological failure into the dirty air.

On every album the duo always fills out the program with a few unexpected covers and this time is no exception. They take “By the Light of a Magical Moon”, a T. Rex tune from Bolan’s hippie dippy days, and turn it into a bouncy country two-step marked by some subtle, wailing pedal steel work by Perkins and a bluegrassy lead guitar solo by Andon Davis. Storto’s vocal on “Blue Kentucky Girl” is pure heartache with an understated pain that makes sad country songs so transcendental; Perkins adds some blue, rippling dobro fills while Rose’s fiddle and Davis’s mandolin dance despondently in the background. “In the Pines” gets a bare bones treatment, just Knowles on guitar supporting the duo’s harmonies, wordless whoops that sound both wretched and jubilant.

The collection lives up to its ironic title with songs that illuminate the personal and national disasters that seem to be plaguing us at the dawn of a new century. By combining grim insight, sardonic humor, and a bit of uplifting music, Mars Arizona gives us something to smile at while the smoggy sun sets on what’s left of the American West.

The population of Mars Arizona is small, just two guitar-pickin' singer-songwriters: Nicole Storto and Paul Knowles. But on their new album, they've got a lot of talented neighbors dropping by, including mandolin guru David Grisman, pedal steel and dobro ace Al Perkins, and classical/country fiddler Alisa Rose. Hello Cruel World finds the San Francisco band firmly ensconced in the rootsy alt.americana sound it began exploring on 2005's All Over the Road, marked by the duo's solid songwriting and understated arrangements. Storto opens things up with "Dirty Town," her chilling voice full of repressed violence and heartache. Rose contributes a swinging Texas-meets-Paris violin solo, and Grisman's supplies his usual subtle mastery on mandolin. "Landscape," dedicated to the city of New Orleans, showcases Perkins' blues-drenched pedal steel, complementing Knowles' gruff, distressed vocals. On "Circus," Knowles compares the country to a sideshow full of clowns who dance while ecological disaster approaches, singing in a weary tone that intensifies the bleak lyrics.

Knowles and Storto also are adept at wringing unexpected changes out of their cover tunes. They turn the early T. Rex fairy frolic "By the Light of a Magical Moon" into a bouncy honky-tonk anthem. Storto delivers an aching lead vocal on "Blue Kentucky Girl," tipping her hat to Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris without emulating either. Perkins drops some teary dobro fills into the mix while Rose's fiddle cries in the background. And "In the Pines" gets a stark, folky, bare-bones treatment highlighted by the duo's wailing, wordless harmonies.