Natalie Rose LeBrecht has quite a lot in common with the New Weird America scene, and the likes of Devendra Banhart, Joana Newsom as well as CocoRosie, who participated at last year’s City of Women festival. At the same time, however, her music is more colourful and original, and as such an echo of Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and other avant-garde performance artists. In addition to composition, LeBrecht plays a whole array of instruments, including guitar, drums and piano, but undoubtedly most intoxicating of all are her vocal abilities which pass from soft, nearly angelic sounds to multi-layered voices and schizophrenic screaming. By way of this, she is able to create a very intimate and emotionally charged atmosphere.
LeBrecht has released limited editions of her own CDs under the pseudonym Greenpot Bluepot; these include Daymares and Nightdreams (2001) as well as Warraw (2003), which was issued in a finely designed small bag that LeBrecht crafted herself. The strange and disconcerting revelations of Warraw are undoubtedly experimentation, but not for mere self-indulgence. Unnerving, confident, organic, this is a feminine record that lulls you inside LeBrecht’s secret paradox, hidden between intelligent social critique and a rare mother-earth psychedelia, which somehow manages to come full-circle. In 2005 she presented her latest composition - Imaging Weather – under her real name.
LeBrecht finds the formal illusion of uniformity boring, and enjoys herself most when she is freed of expectations; some concerts are indeed extreme, and capable of confusing and shocking any audience that expects consistency.
Jure Vlahović
