Rykarda Parasol
A Dark and Deserted Place
2008-01-31
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She scribbles out song lyrics in the late hours when sleep won’t come, but it’s more than that. Her music is infused with insomnia and the dark places you go when sleep won’t come. It’s music about sweltering nights lying awake in flop house motels too hot to sleep; about restless wandering drives to nowhere on midnight highways; about exhausted broken loners sitting alone in dive bars, nursing gin-and-tonics as the sun rises. And through it all, Parasol’s haunting voice, low and husky like the last set at a 4 AM speakeasy. But even that distinctive voice comes from insomnia.
“It was mostly from years of lack of sleep that I started singing lower,” says Parasol. “When I was young, I didn’t have the muscle to do low notes.”
Rykarda Parasol and the Tower Ravens. The name has a certain Tolkein-esque ring to it. And there’s an icy Nordic grandeur in Parasol’s look, a sense of desolation and windswept tundra that’s led more than one reviewer to envision her as a reincarnation of a 1920s nightclub act. But Parasol’s voice is more gritty than sultry, more Nick Cave than Helen Kane. Parasol’s mother was a moody ex-patriot Swede and her father a Holocaust survivor, so her affinity for darker music sometimes seems almost genetic.
With her family’s foreign roots, she never fit in growing up—school teachers early on shamed her out of an accent they labeled a “speech impediment.” As a perennial outsider, Parasol was always drawn to stories of outcasts and recluses. She devoured books by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, stories “where some strange outsider comes and disrupts perfect small town life,” and films by Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch (“I like characters who are morally depraved but you still like them,” she said.) But it was when she moved to Austin, TX, with its close-knit Southern community and history of brooding xenophobia that Parasol acutely felt how different she was.
“I didn’t do anything strange or offensive, but I did mix up the hierarchy just by being an outsider,” she said. “In America, you always feel like you can be anonymous, but people there noticed quickly I was from out of town. I know it didn’t just have to do with Texas; it’s part of the experience of being new, something that could happen to you anywhere.”
Parasol doesn’t sing songs so much as spin yarns, deep moody ballads about hurt and loneliness and longing. Her debut album with the Tower Ravens, Our Hearts First Meet, is set in the Texas Parasol, a mythic desert of sleazy bars and lonesome roads where the parched, lunar landscape of the Lone Star State transcends setting to almost become a character in itself. Some reviewers locked onto the album’s Texas angle, labeling Parasol’s husky sound as “Southern Gothic,” a label that she appreciates even if she doesn’t agree with it. She prefers “rock noir.”
While Parasol sings about her experiences in Texas, her stories of woe and redemption aren’t unique to that state. She’s quick to point out’s that it’s about more than just what Texas does to people.
“I wanted to mention Texas because I actually loved living there,” said Parasol. “I wanted to make something that would really capture my time there. In a lot of the songs, there isn’t necessarily an unhappy ending. ‘Texas Midnight Radio’ is about leaving and taking nice memories with you. While ‘Red River’ is about leaving and not taking anything. The real conflict wasn’t just Texas; it was mostly with myself and not being able to cope with loneliness and isolation.”
Most of the songs on the album draw from her own experience, except for one: “Lonesome Place.” Based on the poetry of Langston Hughes, it’s a stark and sad tale of racism and revenge, of a black man lynched by a Klan mob for loving a white woman.
“I felt authentic in telling that story, because when I was living in Austin there were three major hate crimes in the area: a race killing in the next town, a murder of a transgendered person in Austin and an attack on a Jewish preschool. The sense of hate was palpable, and I really felt moved to comment on it.”
Poets like Hughes are another huge influence on her work.
“I do have a large poetry collection,” she said. “That’s really influenced my internal rhyme as style of diction. I don’t apologize for being under the influence of poetry.”
As a child, Parasol trained as an opera singer—desperate to make music, she convinced her reluctant mother that opera was a classy, respectable avenue to that goal. She attributes her cinematic music to opera influence. “You have to move a story along through music,” she said.
Parasol’s music always touches on struggle and hardship, but the feelings of struggle go deeper than the lyrics, down to something visceral and unknowable. For Parasol, singing itself is a struggle, and that battle comes out with every breath of her mesmerizing, gravelly voice. She openly admits to having no natural talent for music, instead relying on an aptitude for language and story.
“I could never sing on tune as a kid, and even now it’s very difficult to sit in as a musician and try to play someone else’s music,” she said. “It’s not intuitive for me, but I just love living to music and I think that was the driving force for becoming a musician. I’m really more a songwriter than a singer. If I could, I’d hire another broad to sing if I thought anyone could get it right,” she laughs. “Though, with my voice, it would probably have to be a tranny.”
“It was mostly from years of lack of sleep that I started singing lower,” says Parasol. “When I was young, I didn’t have the muscle to do low notes.”
Rykarda Parasol and the Tower Ravens. The name has a certain Tolkein-esque ring to it. And there’s an icy Nordic grandeur in Parasol’s look, a sense of desolation and windswept tundra that’s led more than one reviewer to envision her as a reincarnation of a 1920s nightclub act. But Parasol’s voice is more gritty than sultry, more Nick Cave than Helen Kane. Parasol’s mother was a moody ex-patriot Swede and her father a Holocaust survivor, so her affinity for darker music sometimes seems almost genetic.
With her family’s foreign roots, she never fit in growing up—school teachers early on shamed her out of an accent they labeled a “speech impediment.” As a perennial outsider, Parasol was always drawn to stories of outcasts and recluses. She devoured books by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, stories “where some strange outsider comes and disrupts perfect small town life,” and films by Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch (“I like characters who are morally depraved but you still like them,” she said.) But it was when she moved to Austin, TX, with its close-knit Southern community and history of brooding xenophobia that Parasol acutely felt how different she was.
“I didn’t do anything strange or offensive, but I did mix up the hierarchy just by being an outsider,” she said. “In America, you always feel like you can be anonymous, but people there noticed quickly I was from out of town. I know it didn’t just have to do with Texas; it’s part of the experience of being new, something that could happen to you anywhere.”
Parasol doesn’t sing songs so much as spin yarns, deep moody ballads about hurt and loneliness and longing. Her debut album with the Tower Ravens, Our Hearts First Meet, is set in the Texas Parasol, a mythic desert of sleazy bars and lonesome roads where the parched, lunar landscape of the Lone Star State transcends setting to almost become a character in itself. Some reviewers locked onto the album’s Texas angle, labeling Parasol’s husky sound as “Southern Gothic,” a label that she appreciates even if she doesn’t agree with it. She prefers “rock noir.”
While Parasol sings about her experiences in Texas, her stories of woe and redemption aren’t unique to that state. She’s quick to point out’s that it’s about more than just what Texas does to people.
“I wanted to mention Texas because I actually loved living there,” said Parasol. “I wanted to make something that would really capture my time there. In a lot of the songs, there isn’t necessarily an unhappy ending. ‘Texas Midnight Radio’ is about leaving and taking nice memories with you. While ‘Red River’ is about leaving and not taking anything. The real conflict wasn’t just Texas; it was mostly with myself and not being able to cope with loneliness and isolation.”
Most of the songs on the album draw from her own experience, except for one: “Lonesome Place.” Based on the poetry of Langston Hughes, it’s a stark and sad tale of racism and revenge, of a black man lynched by a Klan mob for loving a white woman.
“I felt authentic in telling that story, because when I was living in Austin there were three major hate crimes in the area: a race killing in the next town, a murder of a transgendered person in Austin and an attack on a Jewish preschool. The sense of hate was palpable, and I really felt moved to comment on it.”
Poets like Hughes are another huge influence on her work.
“I do have a large poetry collection,” she said. “That’s really influenced my internal rhyme as style of diction. I don’t apologize for being under the influence of poetry.”
As a child, Parasol trained as an opera singer—desperate to make music, she convinced her reluctant mother that opera was a classy, respectable avenue to that goal. She attributes her cinematic music to opera influence. “You have to move a story along through music,” she said.
Parasol’s music always touches on struggle and hardship, but the feelings of struggle go deeper than the lyrics, down to something visceral and unknowable. For Parasol, singing itself is a struggle, and that battle comes out with every breath of her mesmerizing, gravelly voice. She openly admits to having no natural talent for music, instead relying on an aptitude for language and story.
“I could never sing on tune as a kid, and even now it’s very difficult to sit in as a musician and try to play someone else’s music,” she said. “It’s not intuitive for me, but I just love living to music and I think that was the driving force for becoming a musician. I’m really more a songwriter than a singer. If I could, I’d hire another broad to sing if I thought anyone could get it right,” she laughs. “Though, with my voice, it would probably have to be a tranny.”
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