laura cortese bitter better

​Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards  (from the album Bitter Better available on Compass Records)
While all albums releases take pre-planning, for Bitter Better, Laura Cortese looked at the song collection from a different direction. Musicians seek to provide service to the listeners, and for Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards, the goal was simple, movement, Laura feeling that ‘when you dance, you let it all go’. For Bitter Better there were no rules, no restrictions just the desire to create music that encourages dancing. Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards are a string band. Bitter Better is the sound of strings and their players expanding and developing the sound of the instruments in a studio environment, deconstructing the songs and embellishing the music with a percussive heft. Outside of strumming and picking, Bitter Better producer Sam Kassirer (Lula Wiles, Lake Street Dive) had the musicians beat on the backs of their instruments, fashioning loops and bass lines that weave throughout the recording.
Plucked notes fall like thick raindrops when Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards open Bitter Better with “Treat You Better”, the storyline mapping out the course of long-term relationships. Regimented rhythms form a framework for “Corduroy Jacket” as notes and rhythms play tag throughout “Dreaming”, sway on the ebb and flow groove of “When We Rocked”, and promise late night comfort on the dreamy melodies of “Talk to Me”. A move to Belgium set up a musical base for Laura Cortese overseas. Bitter Bettertributes friends from her time in San Francisco with “From the Ashes”, the story describing the devastation of wildfires as Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards exit the album with a goodbye to her Boston home in “Daylight”.
Listen and buy the music of Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards from AMAZON
For more information, please visit the Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards website
 
 

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