Josephine Foster
Graphic As A Star
Release Date: Jan 19, 2010
Genre(s): Rock, Folk
Record label: Fire
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Album Review: Graphic As A Star by Josephine Foster
Great, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
When Josephine Foster released A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing in 2006, she provocatively recorded the lieder of composers like Schumman, Brahms, and Schubert in a unique framework. She sang them in German and played acoustic guitar, piano, and harmonica with improvising electric guitarist Brian Goodman accompanying her for a contemporary feel. Though her music exists in a unique space, she echoes such risk-taking classic folk performers such as Shirley Collins.
Based on rating 4/5
Although Emily Dickinson is one of the most well-known American poets by name — we all have to read her in high school — she doesn’t exactly have a lot of greatest hits. If asked to name one of her poems (tricky, since none of them have titles), most of us would probably come up with “Because I could not stop for death,” “Wild Nights — Wild Nights!”, or, maybe, due to the proto-surreal quality of the opening line, “Hope is the thing with feathers. ” What you might not remember, though, is that her poetry isn’t the easiest read.
Based on rating 6/10
Weird, little lovely Josephine Foster. Along with the other first-wave of folk-revivalists that have characterized the early double ‘0s, Foster is one-part psychedelic and one-part deeply rooted in Americana and all its 1960s British imitations. However, throwing her into this tie-dyed heap of her weirdo contemporaries is a lazy association. Certainly, like Ray Raposa of the Castanets, Devendra Banhart, and Joanna Newsom, Foster’s influences are derived from a similar place.