Fri. Oct. 31

Rachael Yamagata made her debut four ago with “Happenstance’’ – that’s a century in music biz terms. She is back, finally – “I’m still alive!” she says - with a two-CD set “Elephants … Teeth Sinking Into Heart,” which, as you might guess, has quite a back-story. We talked with her before her upcoming gig at the Paradise, Friday Oct. 3, and asked her for the “short story” from album 1 to album 2. “We were actually on schedule. ’Happenstance” came out in 2004 and I worked on a year and a half on this,” she said, “ holed up in Woodstock, writing, doing demos. And then we went into the studio, spring of 2006, had the record mixed and ready in August.” Then, trouble with RCA, her record company, and not one but two managerial changes, before finally settling upon a manager and signing with Warner Bros., which just released the set. (She added two songs to the package over the years, bringing the total to 15 and making for a 10 song first CD – “Elephants” – and a five-song second CD, “Teeth Sinking Into Heart.” They are quite different animals. The first gorgeous and sweeping, the second reeling and rocking.
   “I wrote them all at the same time and recorded at the same time,” Yamagata says. “It wasn’t till mixing that it we though it could be really cool if we split it in up. There were a couple of things. The songwriting (on the first CD) got more poetic, was full of imagery. It is a very internal record, and the production mirrors that, but keeping in the imperfections. We went real lush on the orchestration. It had this stormy, haunted studio vibe and it became this cinematic thing.” This is the Yamagata fans remember. But she had an inner rocker screaming to get out. “The rock songs came from the touring, I had this great dynamic for a live show, great anthemic rock songs,” she says. “I started writing songs on guitar, and some up-tempo stuff. Some of the angry stuff worked better up-tempo. If I verged toward rock territory, I didn’t want it to be safe or pretty. It took a lot of time to make it gritty, get the texture, going. So I had these two vibes, I didn’t want to intersperse them; it would not be an easy thing to swallow. [Separating them] just happened. Once I started treating ‘Elephants’ like a film score, where transitions are important, it took it’s own life and started to work for me, and became a powerful statement.”
Being that it was done some time ago, Yamagata said she had to put it on the shelf and not listen to it. “I had my moments of ‘I love this,’ or ‘I hate this,’ but I came back to it, listened to it yesterday for the first time in months and if felt good. I loved it. It still feels fresh enough, even though I’m two years older and have other things I want to say.”
Yamagata would certainly be considered the headliner at the Paradise, but it’s a multiple female-centered bill called the Hotel Café Tour. Joining Yamagata, Meiko, Thao Nguyen, Samantha Crain, and Jenny Owen Youngs. Yamagata says each artist will do two 20-minute sets and share a backing band.  “I’m not really a headliner,” Yamagata says. “I might have a name that sticks out ‘cause I’ve been around the block, but it fits everyone’s fan base, and we’ll probably jump on stage together. It’s pretty much a collective. Nobody has an ego. It’s very generous, old school.” Show starts at 9. Tickets: $15 advance, $17 day-of.
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