September 18, 2006
COME, JOIN THE SIA-ITES:
The Deep Blue Sia: Zero Seven's singer takes you down, then up. (David Skinner, 09/15/2006, Weekly Standard)
HER NAME IS SIA. She is one of the most promising singers to emerge on the music scene in the last few years. And Wednesday night at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., she was one of two featured performers of the British musical act Zero Seven. The couple standing behind me didn't know exactly what to make of her. "She's, um, quirky," said the man. "Yeah," replied his date.Quirky, however, is a serious understatement for this hilarious, audacious, unbridled singer. She talks half nonsense into the microphone, her funny-girl cheeks always bunched up by a great moon-sliver of teeth, and then with barely a pause she busts out a song with a voice the size of houses, buildings, the streets, and the neighborhood. One wonders if this is what is what it was like to see Bjork when she was still with the Sugar Cubes or, for an odd pairing, maybe a young, rascally Natalie Maines before she became important. It was that kind of thing: power and personality and a singular stage presence without any forewarning.
Zero Seven, a wonderfully eclectic band started by a couple of recording engineers looking to experiment in techno music, has become a sometime home for a string of terrific vocalists, including Tina Dico, the soulful Mozes, and now singer-songwriter Jose Gonzales (who opened the show to much applause), whose careers have received a significant boost from the association. Although the band's founders, Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns, seem to be as inspired as any musical duo by the potential for new combinations of sounds, tracks, and rhythms in the modern recording studio, they have emerged as great champions of the oldest musical instrument around, the human voice.
MORE:
Zero 7: The Garden (Mikael Wood, September 6, 2006, City Pages)