by Joshua Smotherman at Middle Tennessee Music
She’s earned songwriting awards from the Plowshares Songwriting Contest, Sisters Folk Festival, Great American Song Contest, Song of the Year, Song Prize, and the Philadelphia Songwriters’ Project. Elisa’s songs have graced networks such as HBO, VH1, and ABC. The preeminent independent music retailer CD Baby hails Elisa as “one of the best we’ve ever heard,” and Singer & Musician magazine says she “belongs on anyone’s must-play list.” In addition to these accolades, Elisa has received artistic fellowships from The Jerome Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, the Hedgebrook Foundation, Isle Royale National Park, and the Brush Creek Ranch Foundation. Her stunning new album, Concrete, is her most seamless collection of eclectic pop-rock. On it, she gracefully weaves through styles and diversely compelling stories with an assured artistic identity.
Moving from the metropolis known as Brooklyn, NY into the small town life of New York Mills, Minnesota – Elisa Korenne chronicles the shifts and transformations that occur with this dramatic change in her new album Concrete.
Elisa’s voice is captivating. It pulls you in and speaks to your soul.
The music provides the landscape; setting the mood for the explorations and discoveries that are about to come.
Concrete is the legend of Pat Benatar joining forces with pop appeal of Sheryl Crow to create an album that would make Melissa Etheridge proud and Natalie Merchant a tad bit jealous.
Elisa weaves in and out of genres like knitting the most comforting of musical blankets.
With a ‘Little Bit of Salt’ sprinkled along the ‘Trail of Broken Hearts’ ’100 Miles to Nowhere’, Ms. Korenne knows how to ‘Take Me Slowly’. As we ‘Lean Into the Curve’, she shows me how to ‘Know Better’ when the ‘Concrete’ wants to ‘Color Me In’.
At the end of our journey I understand to ‘Keep It In My Heart’ would be an injustice when faced with a ‘Love To Love’ situation silently screaming at me, “‘Yours For A Song’ and a ride on the ‘Ferris Wheel’”.
The album title, Concrete, represents the shifts happening in Elisa’s physical and sentimental landscape during this transitory time. “In New York, I was surrounded by concrete, the streets, the buildings, and the sidewalks. But, at the same time, I didn’t have emotional concreteness,” she reveals. The album documents Elisa finding bliss through a centering love relationship and the sweet simplicity of rural domesticity. Complimenting these revelatory personal narratives are fascinating, quasi-mythical tales of eccentrics that time may have forgotten. “There is something about these oddball characters that everyone can relate to,” she says. Tying these perspectives together is Elisa’s emotional eloquence which dynamically shifts from blunt realism to floral pensiveness.
Elisa is opening minds and hearts through music. Let her open yours.
Read more at http://www.midtnmusic.com/walking-the-concrete-sea-with-elisa-korenne/#svM8QZ63XAzRGKXe.99
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