Digable Cat, Letters From My Dreams

Digable Cat spent two years working on Letters from my Dreams, and it shows, but not everyone may be able to handle the emphasis on the singing. This band originates in Illinois, but singer Alina Giurgiu is Romanian, and she packs a punch. Letters from my Dreams is full of long songs, a powerful, husky-voiced female singer with lots of vibrato and a wide range, jangly guitars, violins, and a synthesizer. The mood is mostly somber, with a few more upbeat tracks. Personally, it didn’t entirely suit my tastes, but others may have a different view.

The subject matter here ranges from a song about watching TV to a song about being a soldier. “The Inquisitor Wore High Heels,” which details a woman who asks “do I have you attention now, as I crush your flesh beneath my heel?”, captures the band’s attitude, displaying their feministic side, while “Home” emphasizes the importance of feeling safe. Thrown in the middle is a cover of “Stayin’ Alive,” which shocked me more than anything else, as it goes with a more funky feel, equipped with a rap in the end.

The songs all last about four minutes, which may be too long for such in-your-face vocals. It sounds to me like something from a teenage movie, played in the background while some sort of mischief is taking place. Most of the tracks are relatively slow and detail the singer’s beef with the opposite sex, which can become obnoxious. Giurgiu holds her sustained notes to a point that if you listen to more than two songs in a row, it becomes grating to the ears because of the raspy quality and wavering tone.

Since her voice is so low, at certain points it blends in with the guitars as they approach the same notes and come out on the same level. She has a lower register than Janis Joplin, so I would not compare them, but on the other hand, her voice also takes precedence over the rest of the music, except during the occasional guitar solo. This CD does seem to have an old-fashioned rock style, borrowing more from the 1960s and 1970s than today with its drawn-out notes on the guitar and simple drumming. The bass plays a bigger role than the other instruments, if only because the deeper notes stand out on their own against all the mid-range ones. I would suggest this CD to anyone who likes rock bands from the Baby Boomer generation.