French-American multi-instrumentalist and stunning vocalist Sydney Wayser has emerged with her sophomore album The Colorful, a more lighthearted follow-up to 2007’s The Silent Parade. Where The Silent Parade leaned towards the dark and melancholic, The Colorful presents a collection of songs decorated with the playfulness of toy instruments while maintaining 22-year-old Wayser’s sense of intimate and serene elegance. Praised by NPR for her “natural gift for melody and musicianship,” The Colorful demonstrates a developed maturity that showcases this gift clearly and delicately.
Now based in New York, Wayser grew up in LA, spending her summers in Paris. The Louvre and the Orangerie being only a few blocks from her apartment, she quickly gleaned much of French culture from her songwriter father, leading her to musical influences that include Edith Piaf, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Jacques Brel, among many others. This European sensibility is evident on both The Silent Parade and The Colorful, each filled with tunes that could easily provide a soundtrack to a Godard film or a playful scene from Jeunet's Amélie.
“I wrote mostly everything on piano and children's toys,” explains Wayser, while she was living in a tiny NY studio apartment and using a closet as an ersatz ‘music room’. She then went into the studio with Blaze Mckenzie (producer) and Mike DiSanto (engineer) and “threw around a ton of ideas while we were locked in there for a few days” where, Wayser says, “we were sleeping in the studio (it was still under construction at the time) in the live room with all the toys and other instruments sprinkled around.” Their collaboration led to stand-out tracks such as “La Di Da,” a song written with Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in mind. Like Annie herself, the song is sweetly and idiosyncratically airy. Sydney explains that the inspiration was “the scene on the rooftop after they meet at the tennis match... Diane Keaton gets embarrassed and doesn't know what to say so she says ‘la di da’ and it is this wonderfully awkward moment... and I feel like I have that moment a lot in my life.”
This candor is sweetly evident as well on the lead-off track “Bells,” a melodic and introspective exploration of Wayser’s relationship with the city of New York. Moving from Los Angeles, the change, she says, “was a bit daunting… lots of leather, subways, black… I was really resistant to New York and felt that it would change me in a bad way. I thought I would become more like the people that stare in the subway, exhausted and worn out.” But The Colorful demonstrates that the stress of the city has done anything but wear her out – the album is teeming with a calm joy, compounded by Wayser’s exquisite songwriting and enchanting voice. As Daytrotter has noted, Wayser possesses "… an immediately poignant voice of natural charm, of that smokiness that draws us to Chan Marshall and yet there's a florist's knack for arrangement and fragrance."
Sydney Wayser and The Colorful , as a whole, feels like a sonic representation of this transition through the earth up towards the light. With an unwavering sense of charm and wit, melody and phrasing, Wayser’s latest offering is an irresistible invitation to follow her into the light; an invitation not to be denied.
"… an immediately poignant voice of natural charm, of that smokiness that draws us to Chan Marshall." - Daytrotter
"The Colorful...finds a broader canvas for her expressive vocals and sophisticated songcraft." - Bob Moses, Smoke Music
"Whatever your mood, the live show will enrapture you..." - IndieBall.com
“Think Tori Amos or Fiona Apple with fewer dramatic flourishes.” – NPR Music
"With a voice like Cat Power fused with the spirit of Regina Spektor, what is there not to love about Sydney Wayser and her latest LP The Colorful?" - Beyond Race Magazine
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