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Written
by David Beals, posted by blog admin
The
debut ten song collection from singer/songwriter Sarah Donner’s electronic
project Kittens Slay Dragons is entitled Big Big Heart and provides further
evidence of her artistic range. Donner’s work usually falls in the
singer-songwriter genre and has strong Americana leanings, but she works just
as well outside that mode and her voice finds its footing with the same ease it
does navigating around traditional instrumentation. While this is a strictly
indie affair musically, that never means the production errs on the side of
frugality. Big Big Heart, instead, is full of dynamic colors, clearly rendered
arrangements, and has a bracing sound that grabs listeners straight away. It
explores many of her concerns as an individual but, particularly, her love for
animals and the writing makes use of a number of effective literary devices to
help make her experiences more real listeners.
The
surging opener “Gatekeeper” never relies too much on its electronic backing
and, instead, balances things quite nicely between Donner’s voice and the
musical accompaniment. The percussion is, naturally, electronic in nature, but
everything about this part of the song’s presentation moves with organic energy
and genuine warmth. Donner’s emotive skills get a full workout here and come
across vividly. She brings the same emotive fireworks to bear on the album’s
second song “Castiel”, but it relies a little more on the electronica than what
the first song does, but it filters that through a sharper sense of dynamics
than we ever heard on opener. The chorus is particularly effective. The talent
for dynamics that Kittens Slay Dragons exhibit on the aforementioned song is
treated much more expansively on “Smile Pretty” – this is a track with ebb and
flow that keeps listeners on the edges of their seats and Donner’s vocal
inhabits it with intimacy and dramatic skill.
The
title song is one of the album’s unadulterated gems. “Big Big Heart” has a
nearly perfect build that crescendos in a thrilling way and the same penchant
for crafting memorable choruses in this style sustains Kittens Slay Dragons
through this tune as well. The glistening musical textures powering songs like
this could be sickly sweet in the wrong hands, but Donner and $hClane! aims its
uses in a much more emotional direction that listeners will find impossible to
ignore. ShClane!’s skill with laying down beats gets a real exhibition on the
song “Symbols in the Sky” and the slightly darker, more intense hue to this
song is an excellent shift in gears compared to the relatively bouncy approach
of the earlier songs. It has the same effortless stride and energy, however;
the urgency filling the album’s ten songs makes it all the better. The finale “Head
Down, Heart Up” is a wonderfully stirring closing curtain for Big Big Heart and
Donner saves one of her finest vocals for this moment. Big Big Heart is a
worthwhile release from first song to last and there’s no escaping the
inspiration that obviously gives this work such enormous spirit.
