If you believe the back story, Danielle Stech-Homsy, the daughter of a costume designer/flamenco dancer mother and a gay Syrian painter/set designer father, had no intention of releasing her first album, The Bride of Dynamite . That is, until while living in (where else?) Brooklyn, she was approached by (who else?) a curious and enthusiastic Devendra Banhart, who introduced Rio en Medio to the world via his Gnomonsong imprint. The rest, as they say, is indie history, at least for the handful of folks turned on to Stech-Homsy's quirky brand of bricolage.
If The Bride of Dynamite was a product of private experimentation and serendipity, Frontier is more considered. Recorded in Stech-Homsy's native and current home of New Mexico, the project supposedly began as a series of poems, which she subsequently fleshed out and expanded into songs. That non-musical literary foundation thus frees her up to design soundscapes sympathetic to her words, but the process doesn't affect the results too obviously. If someone said Stech-Homsy began with the sounds and added the words as an afterthought, that would likely fly, too.
Frontier may have been recorded in New Mexico, but at times it sounds like it was mixed on another planet. The basis for most of the songs is frequently a simple guitar pattern (or perhaps baritone ukulele, her axe of choice) and Stech-Homsy's hushed voice, but overdubbed are various found-sound samples, synth squiggles, and a host of other intrusions, sometimes very much at odds with the ghostly mood but somehow still complementary to the tone Stech-Homsy means to convey.
Is "The Umbrella", for example, a spooky folk song enhanced by synthesizers and a mournful (fake?) trumpet, or is it a strange synthesizer track enhanced by the folky underpinning? Are the quiet static clicks, choral effects, and whale cries of "The Diamond Wall" intended as kitsch, invoking a scratchy sound-effects LP from grandma's basement, or are they meant to accent the melodramatic and oddly anachronistic orchestral elements, like Popul Vuh updated for the sampler age? (Eight-minute closer "The Visitor" all but demands its own Herzog film.)
Yet Stech-Homsy is also capable of relatively conservative folk of the stately British school. Indeed, were it not for the minimal pitter-patter of programmed percussion, "Standing Horses" could be a lost Vashti Bunyan track. Likewise "The Last Child's Tear". The title track, however, is pure psychedelic collage, while "Fall Up" approaches reserved electro-pop. "The Light House" sometimes sounds literally phoned in, as if from another dimension. Almost all these tracks go on a little too long, yet hide too many surprises-- like the backing vocals that burst into the hypnotic "Nameless"-- to warrant cutting anything short.
These perplexing musical contradictions help keep Frontier -- even at its most indulgent or confounding-- captivating and sometimes fascinating. If the album never quite sets, like a sculpture that refuses to dry, there's little doubting Stech-Homsy's dedication to her particularly inscrutable vision. Part cosmic fun house, part haunted house, it keeps you on your toes, waiting to see if the next song will amuse you, entrance you, or scare you silly. Or all three.
