Aural Heather - Princess Nut

By: Sophia Al-Maria

Aural Heather
Princess Nut

(RPW)

SOUNDS LIKE: Meryn Cadel . . . except creepy.

WHY/WHY NOT: Spoken word and rock 'n' roll have married happily in the past. Laurie Andersen is the undeniable queen of this and new wavey '80s act like Algebra Suicide come to mind when you hear Vancouver, B.C.'s Aural Heather. Of course wielding spoken word is a razor sharp double-edged-X-Acto. It can all go horribly wrong: speaker kamakazi-ing into the cringing audience with lines that should never be read out loud. Luckily Princess Nut avoids crashing and burning. However they do commit a few unflattering dives: poetic clichés like "sapphire smoke" of a hookah curling around don't do them favors. But on a whole the Lynchian landscape Heather Haley and Roderick Shoolbraid conjure of railroads, murders, cement factories and distant twangy guitar smooth over any other lines that would be better left for the chapbook.