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In the realm of East European music - and far beyond - one will always encounter occasions when unsatisfying performers insist on releasing unwise amounts of material. The cause of such productivity may be a well-hidden sponsor; it might also be a misplaced sense of "talent." The occasions, however, on which a genuinely gifted artist works with both zeal and productivity are extremely rare. There is much reason, therefore, to be grateful for an album from Galia Chikiss a mere month after we celebrated her role as 50% of the Petersburg outfit/side-project Sablia ("Sabre").
Given that we have jumped up and down in previous, frequent support of Chikiss' discography, it seems fitting on this occasion to take a back seat and sketch some of the reasons she has also been garnering positive reviews at home. In the words of Moscow journalist Aleksandr Gorbachev, also responsible for publishing the new CD, "Chikiss' album is beautiful. I really hope that people will get a chance to hear it - because heaven knows that almost everybody could benefit from songs like these."
Chikiss' album is beautiful. I really hope that people will get a chance to hear it - because heaven knows that almost everybody could benefit from songs like these.
That hopeful sense of outreach is reflected on the album's cover, too, made of a sprawling St Peterburg cityscape cast far and wide beneath a dour, darkening sky. Only the fleeting charms of a grand piano can - it seems - offer glimpses of a sunnier vista.
The capital's entertainment magazine Afisha has already praised the album, entitled "Medlenno" (Slolwy), in the following domestic context. "A small sled turns into a snow-covered park and zips across a milk-white frozen pond. The sled is loaded up with a bag of pastries and a happy child. That little girl is called Marusia; her voice can be heard on several of Galia Chikiss's recordings, since they were made at home." This snapshot becomes the starting point for a review of her music.
As we've pointed out before, the border between home and studio is blurred in many of Chikiss's songs. Not only do we hear little children burbling and bumping around; the music itself is often imbued with an endearing, ramshackle quality that's far from the clinical atmosphere of a studio.
Continuing that rationale and general outlook, the same publication then added: "Up until now Chikiss's songs have always resonated quietly [from media outlets] and rather infrequently, too, but perhaps that's the same reason they tend to be heard among friends..."
This issue of an overarching atmosphere conjured by Galia Chikiss' LP is extended further - and made more locally specific, too: "The CD is full of wonderful, slightly old-fashioned songs based around a piano and rhythm section (together with a harpsichord, kalimba, and the kind of reverb you'd associate with Soviet pop). These are tracks given over to [very northern] themes like the Arctic, Antarctic, and a piercing kind of tenderness, too. They're the sort of numbers you might hear at [Soviet festivals like] Sopot-86. These are the kind of tunes that could pop up on TV some Sunday evening... and make a wonderful soundtrack to the weather forecast."
Or to the changing of diapers.
The Moscow music press has also said that "Medlenno" is colored by a general interest in topics of "universality." Such yearnings towards a global or even cosmic scale are indeed reminiscent of Soviet songwriting in the mid-80s, when the civic fabric was so badly frayed, the search for harmony became bolder... and even more romantic, since the here and now offered nothing. Chikiss herself has chipped in with regard to this local romanticism and how it's best expressed: "There are so few people [in Russia] who can sing in English both appealingly and elegantly. Personally I think that performers should sing in their native tongue..."
There are so few people [in Russia] who can sing in English both appealingly and elegantly. Personally I think that performers should sing in their native tongue...
One of the reasons for seeking a satisfying "universality" within the Russian language may indeed be a desire to "redo" the romance of the 1980s, i.e., dreams of what should have happened instead of the grim turn towards materialist chaos. Another reason is that Chikiss has already been able to find a real-world embodiment of her songs in Russian-speaking territories; one need only, it seems, escape the gray climate of the north. By traveling south, she has found the essence of her craft expressed in the landscape; the spirit of "universality" was close to home, which - perhaps - is not great surprise in the world's biggest country, or its neighbors. Traveling anywhere can seem like traveling everywhere...
"The first time I really understood what I sing about is when I visited the rocky shores of the Crimea. I understood that I sing about a magical world... about freedom, and love, too. I understood that I also sing about death... albeit in a positive sense; death in the sense of relief."
Suddenly things go dark.
With that final clause of the quote, we can see how these songs do indeed embody a spiraling, universal romance that is often surprised, if not scared, by its own sweep. The album's closing track, for example (also its longest and offered below) is "A Girl from the Earth" (Devochka s zemli): themes of both growth and death and neatly folded into the same image. Birth and burial lie side by side. For this reason, no doubt, "Medlenno" gives simultaneous expression both to personal yearning and familial comfort; the heady anxieties of the former state are, thankfully, mollified by the latter.
As one journalist noted in a potted bio, used within a recent review: "[Once upon a time,] Galia got married, gave birth to a daughter, and moved into an apartment not far from a park with a frozen pond." And that, in a comforting way, brings us back to the opening familial image of the post, just as this album entertains both the centrifugal rush of a driven lyricism and an opposite striving homeward...
...where other problems await, lipstick in hand. (Note the door frame.)
Together - at different times - with drummers Aleksandr Kulikov and Aleksandr Belkov, plus guitarist Aleksandr Dubrovin, Chikiss continues to gather rave reviews at home. One element in her critical success would appear to be a certain audible consistency in her choice of musicians: three Aleksandrs. That same consistency is what has led reviewers to discern Chikiss's laudable connection to songwriting traditions of prior decades - which she then turns into another, contemporary, and more adventurous step across broader, "universal" realms. The dreamy intentions of the past are extended into a hypothetical, ne'er-realized future.
In the words of one reviewer: "These songs leave me with a strong desire to link them both with the times and nation that once produced [Soviet] artistes like Maiia Kristalinskaia and Aida Vedishcheva. In other words, this music creates a kind of dual effect: on one hand, you feel that you already know about its author [due to these old-school parallels] and yet, on the other hand, it's as if you've only caught the sly, chance gaze [of somebody new and unfamiliar]."
Beyond the constraints of the canon and history, or - more accurately - as an extension of them - we find the same wind-born imagery that Chikiss herself began fashioning on the Crimean seashore. Somewhere in socialist lyricism sat some very grand (and unfulfilled) dreams. From this point onwards, things can become a little impressionistic.
"There is always a sense of airiness in Galia's songs; even the names of the tracks speak of this [open, universal] atmosphere - 'A Song for Pilots,' 'Movement,' and so forth. The CD's production has been handled in ways that recall three birds flying towards a single goal, on occasion touching each other with their wingtips. The drums and guitars form a sold foundation for the piano's flourishes... but the vocals fly even higher. And Yes, this all happens 'slowly,' without any kind of tension or pain."
Moving, therefore, equally slowly from the frustrated "spirit of '86" and amidst the kind of reverb that's heard in empty social spaces, these eight beautiful songs consider tentative flights of fancy. And whenever they reach worrying heights of lyrical jeopardy, the occasional sound of a child or other household clamor brings a calming perspective to bear. Such is the life of a housebound romantic - who sometimes heads south on holiday. The kind of romantic who worries when the lights go out and yet - with the help of a few friends - can still produce what has, in some quarters, been called "the best album by a Russian female artist for the last few years."
We have no intention of arguing.
Nor does anybody else living at the same address.
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