Graphic As a Star

VINYL FORMAT. This is the first record from U.S. minstrel-folk chanteuse Josephine Foster on Fire Records. Graphic As A Star is based upon the poems of the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson. Josephine lays stair-steppy melodies beneath a collection of Dickinson gems and sings them with a burnished soulfulness like the purple sunsets so often described in the poems. Massachusetts mountains, pearled spider-webs and folk hero William Tell, are all present in this unforgettable meeting of Dickinson's poesy and Foster's music, making a natural and inevitable whole. Ms. Foster is a Colorado-born artist whose songwriting draws from far corners of the musical spectrum to form a truly singular body of work. Her voice is sometimes compared to singers as disparate as Grace Slick, Shirley Collins or Tiny Tim, and it's certainly difficult to pigeonhole her varied music. She says her craft is strongly shaped by "Tin Pan Alley on my maternal side, rock and roll on the paternal side, Western folk music by birth, art-song and classical music via my adolescent passions."