Tiny Vipers, Hands Across the Void

Tiny Vipers is the nom de plume of Jesy Fortino, a singer-songwriter from Seattle. Hands Across the Void is her first full-length album, the focus of which is on her voice and acoustic guitar, but that doesn’t mean it’s folk music. Most of the songs are haunting, minimal drones with repeated picked melodies or strummed chords.

The songs here are as much about mood as anything else. On “Shipwreck,” she sings, “We know that life it’s beautiful / though surreal at times,” and the album explores this idea. “Forest on Fire” uses a rising electronic hum and squalling electric guitar that starts about three minutes in; no folk song would allow three-and-a-half minutes of music to go by without any singing, but she does it here. “On This Side” throws in some odd extra beats between verses that help unmoor the song. “Swastika” is a soft song with a very intense intense delivery — it works just as well when played at a very high volume.

The fact that most of the melodies are beautiful also helps sustain the drones. Fortino uses harmonies sparingly but effectively to add extra layers to songs. The one harmonized syllable in “Campfire Resemblance” is perfect — because the song doesn’t move quickly, that one syllable has the impact of an entire chorus. She also helps the pacing of the album by including a couple that are regular songs, like “On This Side” and “Shipwreck.”

Hands Across the Void is impressive, especially for a first album. And Fortino/Tiny Vipers has her own distinctive sound. Her cool and cerebral take on freak-folk is a dose of fresh air. If she had recorded with a band, the music might have lost a lot of its ethereal quality, but with just the few details she added, it became something else entirely, something otherworldly. Hopefully she continues in this vein, because this is a very promising beginning.