Bourbon Princess is a band of four exceptional musicians making beautiful, dark-edged, highly original music featuring the lyrical songwriting of singer/bassist Monique Ortiz. And although the striking front woman does enjoy a good glass of Maker's Mark, she is not the actual Bourbon Princess.
"People always come up to me at shows and ask me why the band name called Bourbon Princess,"Monique says. "I try to explain that it's not me, but a woman the Marquis de Sade had an affair with - the Princess of Bourbon - and that I named the band after her.
With the co-release of Bourbon Princess' new Dark of Days by the Accurate and HI-N-DRY labels and the band's upcoming tours, Monique will have a lot more explaining to do as a bigger audience comes under the spell of her group's mesmerizing sound.
Monique calls the sound "blue wave ": new wave with a restrained but distinct blues and jazz flavor. She crafts the approach from the warm, flexible tones of her contralto voice and the deep sonorities of her versatile bass playing, with the help of her talented co-conspirators: original Morphine drummer Jerome Deupree, Either/Orchestra saxophonist/leader Russ Gershon and guitarist/pianist Jim Moran.
Bourbon Princess began as a bass and drums duo, but over the course of two albums, 2000's debut Stopline and 2003's Black Feather Wings, and hundreds of live performances, the group's line-up and adventurous sound textures have grown into one of the most distinctive styles in modern rock while drawing comparisons to such giants as Jeff Buckley, Patti Smith, Jim Morrison and Nina Simone.
Dark of Days is a creative breakthrough for Bourbon Princess. "The album is more pop yet darker than anything we've done," says Monique. "That might seem contradictory, but I think we've pulled it off."
"It's the first body of songs I've written that are really influenced by the times," she continues. "The first two albums were about things that were going on in my head or in my immediate world. This one is less self absorbed. 'Dark of Days' is really about the political times we're all living through now. 'Cliché' is social commentary, written from the point of view of a single woman struggling to make a living, not ready to give up and yet not being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel for all of her efforts. I think plenty of us are feeling that way today."
Dark of Days is also the first full-length collaboration between Monique and Paul Q. Kolderie (producer/engineer for Radiohead, Hole, Morphine, and many others), who manned the console. "It was a great partnership," she says. "He could hear what we were trying to do with our sound and made it more expansive and clear. Since Paul is a bass player, too, it was easier for me to convey the sound I wanted to capture, which is very bass driven, without compromising the other instruments."
Although Bourbon Princess is based in Boston, Monique hails originally from the Pennsylvania of open farmlands and Amish horse-and-buggy traffic. She moved to Massachusetts seeking an environment more receptive to her creativity. Within months she was performing her songs in clubs and coffeehouses, at art school parties and poetry slams, accompanying herself on fretless bass. Audiences immediately responded to her dry wit and riveting presence.
Early on Monique began perfecting a percussive and sliding instrumental style flavored by Arabic grooves, the perfect support for her cinematic lyrics which, while at times unsettling, are always strangely beautiful and affecting.
Besides the two previous Bourbon Princess albums, Monique's songs have appeared on the Respond II compilation alongside tunes by Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann and Dolly Parton, and on MTV's Real World. She has also been nominated for a prestigious Boston Music Award and in the Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll in the best female vocalist category.
Reviews:
Press Reviews:
TASTES LIKE CHICKEN (tlchicken.com)
I'm still beside myself with how goddamn good this is. Lead singer Monique Ortiz's voice drips thickly over sax and drums, creating a mood both as sexy as your first true love, and as dark and brooding as the end of the world. Bourbon Princess is one that never disappoints.
THE GRADE: A
- Wayne Chinsang
DAILY TARHEEL, March 24, 2005
Though the name of the modern rock band Bourbon Princess has nothing to do with Louisiana and more to do with the French Princess of Bourbon - as soon as the bass of the first song begins on Dark of Days, it is as though you have stumbled upon a pre- or post-Mardi Gras jam session held somewhere close to the famous New Orleans party street.
Bourbon Princess has returned with its third album and has applied its trademark bluesy sound and funky trumpet vibrations to tracks with weighty drumbeats and has managed to create a very strong album.
True to the album's title, the band provides nail-bitingly haunting arrangements, with tracks worthy of inclusion on any horror movie soundtrack. But Bourbon Princess displays its talent and versatility with a variety of songs each standing strong on its own originality and energy.
Monique Ortiz, the lead singer, songwriter and bassist, is responsible for the album's story-like lyrics, and engineer Paul Kolderie - who has worked with rock bands Hole and Radiohead, is credited with the album's unique sound.
The album begins with "Still Asleep" and "The Waiting Noon," on which saxophonist Russ Gershon displays his talent with a provocative rhythm, lusty enough to influence anyone imagine moving as though they are the wavy stream of air coming from the hollow opening of his instrument.
The instrumentation of this album can not be ignored - the music alone would have been enough to offer an enjoyable release.
But Ortiz's lyrics are almost as engaging as their musical arrangements. In "Still Asleep," Ortiz croons in a dreamlike state "Better come back my friend./ Gonna lock you in my legs again,/ pin you to my bed and pull a pillowcase/ over your handsome head." Her vocals, suggestive of Tracy Chapman and Nina Simone influences, are as penetrating as her bass.
Ortiz offers a little sunshine on a gloomy day in "In Between Songs," an upbeat song about catching the eye of an admirer who makes her a little more excited than she expected to become.
As the album moves along, the songs begin to slow down, but Bourbon Princess doesn't lose its enthusiasm.
Ortiz could have easily to put listeners to sleep with her abysmal voice in ballads such as "Cliché" and "Master Manipulator," but her sound intensifies and the lyrics become sharper, deterring any urge to skip to the next track.
Bourbon Princess has received critical acclaim for its murky sound, and the band does a good job of preventing the album from becoming dismal and boring.
The creativity and originality of Bourbon Princess is undeniable, and Dark of Days proves that the band definitely has a sound you definitely won't find anywhere else.
Dark of Days is an album with songs that have a variety of arrangements and lyrics capable of holding your attention till the very end.
MIX MAGAZINE, March 1, 2005
BOURBON PRINCESS
Dark of Days
(Accurate/Hi-N-Dry)
The unfortunate band name, Bourbon Princess, brings to mind some boozy rock 'n' roll chick, but actually, the music of this Boston-based band comes from a very different space.
Deep-voiced lead singer/songwriter/bassist Monique Ortiz has written a set of dark, moody tunes that are somewhat reminiscent in spirit to The Doors, Patti Smith and Nico-era Velvet Underground, as well as the Boston band Morphine, whose drummer, Jerome Deupree, plays skins in Bourbon Princess. Sax player Russ Gershon also brings some of that Morphine vibe, while guitarist Jim Moran lays down haunting lines that snake around the extremely prominent bass parts supplied by Ortiz. At times jazzy, other times more rockin' and hypnotic, Bourbon Princess has made an album that is both unique and uncompromising.
Producer: Bourbon Princess. Engineer: Paul Q. Kolderie
- Blair Jackson
BOURBON PRINCESS REIGNS
Boston Globe
The sound of Monique Ortiz's world changed the moment she first heard Morphine. It was 1996 and for Ortiz, a former New Wave Goth girl who had grown up playing the bass guitar in suburban Pennsylvania, the exotic atmospheres of Morphine's music sounded like an epiphany. What struck her, she remembers, is "how different it was, and the mood of it.
"It seemed like something a lot of us wished we could do, and we couldn't figure it out. They were onto a concept that I really wanted to pursue, which was [mostly] guitarless rock, where the bass was the focus or the horns were the focus." That's all the reason Ortiz needed to leave her home state. She headed for Morphine's birthplace of Cambridge, and began developing an approach not only indebted to that band, but also to influences as diverse as David Sylvian (singer for the art-punk outfit Japan), and Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry. Later, Ortiz discovered jazz singer Nina Simone.
Ortiz, who plays the Zeitgeist Gallery June 20, recently released her second album, "Black Feather Wings," under her stage name, Bourbon Princess. The disc is out on the Cambridge-based Accurate Records label. The perfect soundtrack to a late night of low lights and smoky ruminations, thanks to its author's equally smoky, contralto vocals and Beat-inspired lyrics, it is also a date with destiny. The disc features ex-Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley, original Morphine drummer Jerome Deupree, and was recorded at Morphine's Hi-N-Dry studio. The creative spirit of that band's deceased singer-bassist Mark Sandman also looms large.
"It's no secret that these guys are some of my biggest musical heroes," Ortiz says. "Even now, I have moments where it hits me and I go, `My God, I actually did it - I made a record with Dana Colley and Jerome Deupree.' I'm honored." Recording with them, as well as multi-instrumentalist Jim Moran, was a valuable learning experience, she says. While the ambience of the music sounds unmistakably like Morphine, to anyone who has attended her shows over the past several years, "Black Feather Wings" is also very much a snapshot of Bourbon Princess's own dark-hued dreams.
"I wasn't trying to copy Morphine," says Ortiz, whose band features a rotating cast of musicians, including Accurate Records founder and Either/Orchestra saxophonist Russ Gershon. "But there's really no avoiding sounding like people that you really like. And this is a kind of rock that should be pursued and explored. The sound shouldn't die just because Mark isn't with us anymore."
For her next album, Ortiz envisions other collaborations as a way to explore tones and textures in her music even she hasn't discovered yet. As a female artist who doesn't fit the Lilith Fair-folk or mall-pop molds, the future appears wide open. "I cringe when people use that (singer-songwriter) terminology with me, because I know what they're thinking and I'm not that," she says. "Maybe there's somebody else in the country or the world that sounds like this, but I haven't heard it yet. So I have the feeling that I'm on the right track."
Author(s): JONATHAN PERRY Date: June 19, 2003 Page: 9 Section: Calendar
Check out the artist's website:
http://www.bourbonprincess.comTrack List:
1. Strong Coil
2. Lovesick
3. Jim
4. 3:15
5. Stopline
6. Porchswing
7. The Inside
8. Clocks
9. Off The Air (demo 1)
10. Off The Air (demo 2)
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