Fingertips Music featured Strawberry Wine this week. Here’s what Jeremy Schlosberg had to say…
Finger-picking and generally slapping around a beat-up cello, Trevor Exter makes music that is both seriously unusual and thoroughly, pleasingly accessible.
First off, dig the long, funky introduction. I don’t usually like long, funky introductions, but I have never before heard one coaxed and charmed and pulled and plucked out of a cello before. In Exter’s hands, the instrument generates an soft, incandescent groove, neither bass-like nor guitar-like—nor especially cello-like either, given his unconventional technique. It’s kind of mesmerizing, and gets even friskier once the singing starts (after two and a half minutes) and the cello is used as punctuation, in a variety of creative, textured ways. Then again, once the singing starts, it’s hard to keep one’s ears entirely on the cello, since Exter has a grand instrument right there in his throat—a lithe and buttery tenor, full of soul but light as air. Never before (I don’t think) have we heard a cello and a voice perform so intimately and knowingly together, since the cellist and the vocalist are usually two different people. The galvanizing impact on the fabric of the song—the way the cello riffs and rhythms work so tightly in and around the vocal lines—is hard to overstate. And let’s not overlook the song itself, which is more than just a pleasant groove; he’s written a spiffy hook in there as well (the trembling, shivering, I am under your spell part).
Exter grew up, home-schooled, in upstate New York, found the cello at an early age but never took to classical music, and eventually spent a lot of time in South America absorbing a rich array of Brazilian pop into his psyche and repertoire. He’s come and gone from New York City over the years, but is currently back there, gaining a following for the crazy, lovable thing that he does, playing both solo and with a band. Strawberry Wine is a song off his CD Flying Saucer People, which was self-released this year.
Thanks for the great review, Jeremy! I’ll try to make it down to Philly again soon.
xtr