by Kathryn Salter
(for encorepub.com, Wilmington, NC)

Vanessa Peter’s small but powerful voice creates music that blends soft indie rock and melodiously subtle alternative-country, immersing listeners into a world of vividly familiar, yet humble lyrics. Peter’s words capture the little details that make her experience real to anyone who listens.

Her songs play out like little stories where tiny characters seem to wonder about the landscapes of the music­—characters that are Vanessa, that are her band and that are the listeners. This artist has the great ability to take an experience, any experience, and share it in such a way that she instantly finds common ground with her audience. Any moment may be relatively unique, like in “Anti-Hero,” when Vanessa sings: “I dreamed last night that I lost the first vampire I ever loved/to the cold and snow of Michigan/and those six months of staying up till the dawn/ have changed my entire life/I’ll never be the same again.” Though most of us has never loved a vampire, perhaps we have loved a person who drained us of our energy, someone we can all relate to the experience of losing. This song seems to be as much about the mourning for the loss of self as it is the longing and mourning for someone else. Instantly Vanessa Peters shows how her lyrics are loaded enough to arouse emotion.

Then there is the title track, “Little Films,” where Vanessa sings: “and I remember that/your hands were small/but big enough to hold my head up/surely that can’t be all/that those years were made of, no?” Doesn’t this remind us all of that person who lifted us up, male or female, that best friend or lover that was so humanly flawed, yet countered our own flaws so greatly. Though we know the depth of this person’s soul, sometimes all we can remember are the little things they did—the times they held us up when we needed it.

Vanessa is herself a woman of experience. Having lived in Tuscany for a number of years, she is worldly but humble. In fact, it was there that her friends discovered her talent, which she had kept hidden, practicing in private, keeping her music hidden between her mattresses. The musician blames her terrible stage fright for her discretion, but when her friends overheard her practicing one day, they urged her to give a public performance. It is here that she felt the surge of energy from the crowd, that she felt the connection, it was in Tuscany that she found herself as a musician.

Now that she’s back in her homeland, Vanessa’s ability to connect with her audiences has garnered her nominations for several awards, including Best Folk Artist, Best New Artist, Best New Band and Best Female Vocals, in her native Texas. She also won “Best Audiomentary Award” for her fifth studio release, Little Films. Now she embarks on a 40-stop tour across America, along with her band, Ice Cream on Mondays, whom she met while touring in Italy. The group will be making performances at some of the nation’s funkiest venues, including our very own homegrown coffee house, Folk’s Café on Market Street. The show gets under way at 7pm this Friday, October 20. You are surely to find something familiar and beautiful in the music flowing from this marvelous songstress and her band. It’s as sweet as, well, ice cream on a Monday.

Vanessa Peters is a singer/songwriter with a band. While that might not seem like an exciting description, there's a huge difference when a solo female artist - or any solo artist, actually - has a solid group of musicians with her. Suddenly the songs sound like they have some weight to them; it isn't just somebody blandly strumming a guitar. (The worse ones are those backed by drum machines.) Whether or not Ice Cream on Mondays will become household names like the New Bohemians remains to be seen; all that matters right now is that they give more power, musically speaking, to these tracks.

All eyes will set upon Peters' lyrics first. Peters' words have fractured arrangements; they are bits and pieces which add up to a whole. At times, she can be as edgy and black as the late Sylvia Plath. On "Fireworks," Peters sings, "Well, I can take your picture down now and put up new ones of happier times/And not be afraid of your angry ghost/With its face like sucked limes." Such cutting bitterness isn't depressing but cathartic. You can relate to Peters once you've solved the mysteries of her words, and it doesn't take English 102 to comprehend.

Despite the introspective quality of the lyrics, Peters' songs are very accessible to commercial radio; the title track has upbeat jangly guitar hooks and "Amelia" has memorable, toe-tapping riffs. Country flavors sneak in here and there, such as on "Fireworks," giving the record more variety and unexpected spice.

Easily distinguishing itself from the glut of female singer/songwriter records is this literate, haunted gem from Austin, Texas folk artists Vanessa Peters & Ice Cream on Mondays. It's no surprise that this group was voted among the best of their genre in local competition. Actually, the folk label is a tad restrictive. The band's music is far more polished - and even rocking - than much of what is categorized as such.

The title track is pop perfection, a jangly jewel that camouflages its melancholy lyrics with wind-swept harmonies and ringing guitar riffs. In the song - Peters' best moment - the narrator develops a series of snapshots, each one a broken frame of childhood. "Playing catch with you at a stoplight/Or was that somebody else? It's hard to keep all these memories straight when you keep them locked away on the top shelf," Peters sings with a deceptively upbeat tone. The song is about losing a dad at a young age, either through death or abandonment, and the difficulty in trying to remember, separating real memories from made-up ones that fill in the blanks. She returns to this theme on "No Sense," in which she is trying paint his picture in her mind. "What good's a memory, without a face or a voice?" Peters laments, painful words that too many of us can empathize with. If all this sounds too grim and serious, Peters keeps the mood of the music fairly light; don't expect a downbeat Leonard Cohen approach.

With its folk, country, and alternative influences, Little Films covers broad territory. She even includes a surprising slice of Goth. On "Anti-Hero," Peters sings of a love affair with a vampire. What could've been a silly Anne Rice homage is actually sung with genuine feeling. The cinematic "Love Story" is a winter romance with dreamy vocals and incandescent acoustic guitar.

There isn't a boring moment on Little Films. Peters's lyrics are captivating from beginning to end, and her band consistently provides superlative support, vividly capturing her swaying moods.

Literary folk-pop delivered with coffeehouse warmth and sundae sweetness, "Little Films" is an album of subtle charms. So subtle, in fact, that you'll be win over by it without realizing it. Vanessa Peters (http://www.vanessapeters.com) has a voice like Beth Orton or Dido; it has an understated beauty that colors the lyrics with feeling and personality but doesn't jump in your face.

The title track offers summertime college-radio jangle with intriguing, enigmatic lyrics. Peters' words are like splintered pieces of a puzzle; put them together and you start to see stories unfolding in your brain. The song seems to address emotional distance from a parent and the pain which comes from remembering better days. The "Little Films" are childhood memories ("playing catch with you at a stoplight") uncovered, vague recollections of long ago that continue to haunt an adult mind in sharp, obscure fragments. "No Sense" seems like a continuation of the tale as the narrator attempts to describe a lost loved one, possibly a father. They're both wounded, heartfelt confessions.

Peters is a true poet. These are not pointless, angst-ridden diary chapters. They're revealing, wonderfully written tunes that move and delight the ears.

Much of the album is best suited for rainy days, especially the dreamy "Love Story" and the Gothic romance "Anti-Hero," wherein Peters is wooed by a vampire.

Our Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

If you are an Aggie and have been around these parts for the last few years, or if you are an Italian and have been around Castiglion Fiorentino, then you know about Vanessa Peters. Once upon a time Vanessa was just another Aggie majoring in English and looking for something exciting and interesting to do and she ended up spending a summer studying abroad in Italy through Texas A&M's Santa Chiara. Thus begun was a life between two continents, along with a music career on in two different worlds and finally an Italian band with an American gone Italian girl to create Ice Cream on Mondays and Vanessa Peters music success story. Vanessa is currently touring the U.S. and set to hit 22 states. She will assuredly run back and forth between here and Italy several times over the next year and cover venues on every avenue in between.

Her latest album, Little Films, was released this month and is sure to be distributed around the U.S. during this tour. A nice theme running through the album, Little Films holds much reference to staged or scored love affairs and how the audience may react. This album seems to have a much more western feel to it than what I remember from the others which were much more folk concentrated. Ironic since she is now living abroad but sometimes that is how things work out but some of this may have to do with studio and production influence of Salim Nourallah. Salim is often associated with Old 97's and Rhett Miller, modern rock-a-billy sound that first rocked the Dallas area and has now made it into mainstream media through the film "The Breakup". Salim's wisdom and style have created a polished and sophisticated album for Peters and she is paving solid ground with this album and current tour.

We'll start with "Love Story" in which the percussion seems to imitate a ticking clock. Lyrics like "We all know she meant it so it can't all be her fault" along with beautifully symphonic back ground vocals. Her sound is reminiscent of The Sundae and the building bah, bah, bah background vocals make you feel like you are in a movie theatre watching this love story falling apart. Wistful and regretful without a self deprecating attitude this tune is about accepting mistakes and feeling sad but recognizing that sometimes life is that way.

Onto "Fireworks" opening with acoustic guitar intro layered with banjo and then full accompaniment and Vanessa comes in with vocals. This song is along the same lines with "Love Story" "in wistfulness sometimes there aren't fireworks sometimes all the gunpowder in the world will not light up the sky"---The soft banjo detected adds class to the tune.

"Big Time Underground"---I like this song because it has a feistier element than what I remember of the overall Vanessa Peters feel. She seems to have more spunk with this song, "are you going for an Oscar or are you happy with an independent film award?" There is a nice western feel to guitar, has a "Rolling Stones Honky Tonk Girl" feel or an early Jackson Browne element, and this song is humorous and tragic all at once. This song is tell tale that Vanessa is no longer the sweet folkie doodling with ditties but has been around the world, seen what life can do and is wise to the difficulties in relationships and their complexities. She wittingly portrays to her audience with a dry edge that she is tired of playing around and is somewhat jaded. She demands respect with this particular tune and in turn earns it.

Last song, fittingly, is "Parting Scene". The song houses nice falling chord progression and echoed steel guitar and is reminiscent of Wilco's "Lonely One". I am very affected by the forlorn sounding guitar solo. The album overall is nicely pieced with theme and consistent with mature and well produced music. Not to mention the artistic cover work and photography within the album insert booklet. Vanessa has worked her way up to a fine album.

Read more about Vanessa or buy her albums at:
www.vanessapeters.com or www.myspace.com/vanessapeters

Listen to KEOS 89.1 and follow Revolutions live music calendar to catch more of Vanessa's music and performances.

Little Films, indeed they are. Vanessa Peters & Ice Cream on Mondays cut slices of life into cinematic pieces. Peters opens up areas of listeners' minds previously unknown to exist in the same way that Bob Dylan does. This album inspires repeated listening on a continual basis. With every listen a new layer of depth and understanding is discovered. Listening to this album is like putting together a puzzle. Each listener will get the same picture when all is said and done, yet the path to the end result is different for each person. If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, those thousand words from each listener spoken out loud will essentially state one basic truth. Vanessa Peters is well on her way towards being regarded as one of the most important voices in this generation.

"...these songs are surprisingly good. With the help of her Italian friends, Ice Cream on Mondays, Ms. Peters brings us 14 songs which are really film tales. Think of Patty Griffin, Aimee Mann, or Suzanne Vega and you get an idea of what you can expect from Vanessa Peters...some quiet songs but also songs with more rock in the music."