Singers with Unique Voices: Natalie Prass (The Unique Voices Club #18)

Every Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music in an effort to educate emerging artists and music lovers and inspire them to embrace their own quirks. This week I'm writing on Natalie Prass.

Taken from her homepage

It's been a decade since Natalie Prass released her eponymous debut album even if I only discovered her a few years later. And it's been about six years since she's released anything as of late. But she's still touring at various venues around Nashville, the capital of music in America, and more. Like I feel with any of the artists I share here, I wish she'd release another album already even if she has a couple of little singles.

Natalie was born in Columbus, Ohio but moved around America to places like California, various sections of Virginia Beach, Richmond, Boston and Nashville. Her dad, a business owner, would play and write songs on his guitar, and play a ton of oldies and Motown during car rides. Being at school in Virginia Beach at the time, if you were in a band it was either the follow-the-sheet-music-exactly orchestra or jazz band with all these orchestral instruments, or you were in a rebel-labeled punk/hardcore band. And Natalie and her catalog of the Beatles, Dusty Springfield and Stevie Wonder didn't really fit in with either side of the pendulum. But she was still like, screw it, I like this and you can't tell me what to like, according to an interview with The Line of Best Fit. Just like I go screw this, I'm gonna listen to Joanna Newsom and play The Shaggs in between shows back when I tech interned for the college radio station and subjected my listeners to zany stuff that violated their eardrums. And educate my toddler nephew with South African jazz that isn't even in English. Break rules and don't allow yourself to be told what to enjoy, fellow firebirds. A lot of the greatest art was created out of breaking the mold. So go do it like Natalie and other singers with unique voices I've covered here did.

Natalie Prass's debut album is categorized as a kind of chamber pop, and her second is a bit more groove. Both were produced by the retro indie label Spacecomb Records. She and that Norwegian singer Aurora have this songbird-like quality to their voice, but where they differ is the soul element that Natalie grew up with which you can hear in her lower range. Her sound generally sounds like it's created through all the parts of the mouth through a variety of different resonators (like the nasal cavity, hard palate, etc.; Going from all the physiological stuff I got in classical vocal training I suddenly sound like a speech pathologist), that evoke whatever mood she wants to create in each song. She could cover Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man" and sound almost exactly like her. In fact, she did cover Dionne Warwick's "Deja Vu" for Spotify some years ago, with similar instrumentation to the original that still fit her voice. So it's like her voice is some retro hybrid of a different time and a part of the forest where birds sing their most intimate songs.

Such plays into her songwriting. A Redditor said that her eponymous debut helped them get through a really hard breakup, and her next one, the more discoey The Future and the Past, was born out of the results of the 2016 presidential election similar to how art can be a form of protest. And of course, because I'm in theatre, her music could work well in a jukebox musical, with its Cole Porter influences and horn sections. With her small following of around 20K on various social media platforms and Spotify, I heavily implore you to go listen to her stuff. Especially if you're wanting to be a full-time artist and think your style is too weird for people to like. Go do it.

And that's that for this week on The Unique Voices Club! Go join the Patreon here in order to keep the art revolution alive. Because then you have the ability to recommend new artists to me directly! Remember that there's power in the unconventional. Now go read up on other artists I've written about.

Stay educated,

Alexia