“I want to release some good, honest music, and become a pretty good pianist,” Eddi Front tells me when I ask her what she hopes for in 2013. However, those already familiar with her would likely argue that she’s already released some music that is both “good” and “honest,” and that she would seem to already be a “pretty good pianist” (Pitchfork, The Independent, and Dazed and Confused are all members of that group of early fans.) Last November the singer/songwriter released her debut EP on Best Fit Recordings. The album’s sound manages a delicate balance of “popularly pretty” and “morbidly profound.” It’s not at all surprising that it includes a Nick Cave cover, but I think it might also hold some appeal for a piano pop fan after a case of having their heart curbstomped… It’s bleak… but more like Bleak Light… In describing the album’s narrative, she tells me,
“It wasn’t really planned this way, but each song kind of describes a stage in a relationship. The Nick Cave cover, ‘Into My Arms,’ is the love and awe for a person. ‘Super Hero Style’ is realizing the end is coming and anticipating one of us ‘grabbing the bull by the horns’ and actually ending it. ‘Gigantic’ was the sadness that followed, and ‘Texas’ was some funny jokes to cope with just being pissed off. A little timeline of LOVE.”
Eddi Front is actually the moniker of the ineffably intriguing 27-year-old Ivana Carrescia, a brilliant Nevada-born artist, currently residing in New York. Eddi has spent her life surrounded by words and music. Her mother is a linguist (who raised her on her own) and her father is an orchestra conductor, leading her to write and record her own sounds on cassette tapes from a very young age. She was persuaded to learn violin, but learning guitar at 15 seems to be the first step toward her current musical identity.
Eddi seems to be quite an intriguing entity. She certainly embodies a certain noir aesthetic – existing, seemingly, in bold blacks and whites – but it’s more of an anti-noir… She’s certainly not glorifying anything traditionally considered romantic. She admits to having indulged in a Mozzian-solitude for most of her life… The more I get to know about her, the more I realize the parallels of our existences… When asking what led to her chosen moniker, she tells me, “I always wanted to have a boy’s name, since I was a little kid. Also, I get to sign off as ‘Edward’ or ‘Ed’ in letters now, which makes me very, very happy.”