No’am Newman penned this review.
The Roche sisters have a long track record of off-beat acoustic releases, and this item falls squarely into their canon. The title comes from the address where many of the rehearsals were held for the material contained within: Zero Church Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which happens appropriately to be a church. Appropriately, for the songs on this disc address themselves to spiritual matters, and are in the form of modern, non-denominational prayers (“we were not focused on an academic or historical study of prayer; we were simply interested in working with anyone who wished to share a prayer with us”). Thus the lyrics to the songs are a polyglot of biblical verses, Buddhist poems, childlike questions, spirituals, and even a song commemorating the firemen who died at the World Trade Center on September 11.
Not being the most spiritual of people, I have to admit that the words don’t particularly speak to me, but I can understand the appeal which they have for their composers, performers and all who had a part in creating them (the Roches are joined by several people from diverse sources in their renditions of the mostly original material on this album). The heartfelt “Each Of Us Has A Name” is a translation of a poem which is familiar to the modern Israeli audience, being strongly connected to the Holocaust; here the words are in English and set to a different tune, and for me the emotional impact is diminished.
When looking at the cd sleeve, I was pleased to note that the record had been produced by Stewart Lerman and featured Steuart Smith as one of the musicians. These two had a strong hand in Dar Williams’ Green World which I reviewed a year ago for the Green Man , and I had hoped that their contributions to this disc would be in a similar vein. This wasn’t to be so, unfortunately, probably because of the different nature of the two projects. Without disparaging anybody, Williams’ disc was more musical whereas this disc is more lyrical.
Zero Church is the sort of disc which is better to hear in a live setting; the songs are attractive the first time round, mainly because of their non-conformist arrangements, but I found that I was enjoying the songs less and less the more I played the disc. The lyrics could definitely serve as the basis for discussion groups, or for modern church meetings – such groups were in fact the basis for the creation of the disc, and the songs that resulted from those experiences could easily serve as the seed for similar discussions and vocal communities elsewhere in the world.
(Red House Records, 2001)
at the Roche’s web site; these make interesting reading, but
unfortunately there are no sound samples to accompany them.
