Bare Wire

"'I know I said I'm fine, but I lied,' Bare Wire's only member Simone Grey sings desperately on Delicatessen's 42-second first track, 'Verisimilitude.' This desperation does not let up one bit during the next 14 tracks of this unusual album that has a creepy way of working into your soul. "Delicatessen is a sparse, haunting and at times unspeakably beautiful album, perfect for late night brooding after a terrible breakup. Most songs clock in under two minutes, and a good deal are less than one minute long. Each brief track exudes thick angst; the lyrics contain a great deal of pleading with a lover. In 'Water Glass,' Grey wails, 'Please don't break me.' In 'Airport,' she sings 'Please, please hold me... oh God, please don't let go of me here.' The only lyrics to 'Small Unimportant Requests' are 'Oh, have mercy, have mercy, mercy on me.' "Grey's voice evokes Tori Amos at her most desperate, but unlike that pop goddess, this album is never meant for casual listening. Backed only by an electric bass and the occasional gothic keyboard, the songs have no beat, nor do they have any discernible melody. "Each track sounds about the same as the next, but it doesn't matter because these tracks feel more like prayers or chants than true songs. In fact, at the start of each track, I felt almost surprised that the vocals were in English; the music sounds so foreign and otherworldly, I expected not to understand the words on more than an emotional level. "'Court Adjournment,' the album's closing track, goes on for an uncharacteristic nine minutes. But the vocal part stops shortly into the song, ending Delicatessen with several minutes of sparse, moody keyboards and bass guitar. It sounds like the soundtrack to a frightening psychological thriller, just as the detective finds the killer's dark lair and looks through all the creepy stuff he's got there. "Bare Wire certainly makes great mood music fit to scare the kiddies on Halloween or to play in the background on a stormy night when you feel like brooding. But it also holds some real emotional strength. No one listening to Simone Grey's gorgeous but frantically hopeless vocals could possibly think she's just kidding around. "
-- Melissa Balick, The Pitt News Find out more at Bare Wire's Web Site