Reggae for the... Left Legg?
Work of the singer whose album we are presenting today, unfortunately, is terra incognita for the open public. A man unsophisticated in music could have at best heard her name, which with its simple phonetics does not catch ear at all - Olga Arefieva.
Her voice is something different. Light and incredibly flexible, sonorous and unbelievably deep, soft and languid like reed pipe's at one moment and sharply summoning like marine Siren's at another. Sometimes she is also called a representative of the alternative music and is even named the uncrowned queen of the Urals rock. Indeed, though taught by Lev Leshchenko, she by no means absorbed the Soviet tradition of the enthusiastic singing and keeps in her work to such classic musical styles as folk, rhythm-and-blues, country, and others, masterly synthesizing and enriching them. Having spent on the stage more than a decade, the singer produced about six albums, and each of those was really successful among the so-called progressive club audience. The new disc bears a playfully attractive title "Reggae of the Left Legg" and is dedicated to the pioneering by the Russian musical tradition of the Jamaican folklore. This dynamic and optimistic music has long been enjoying firm recognition in the world, among others this is due to the imperishable hits of the famous "Boney M". But this is not to mean that Arefieva went along the same path. To the contrary, her versions are more poetic, lyrical, and desperately witty, though Olga works with a perfectly precise feeling of style: neat, easy to remember musical phrases put on the boldly killing rhythmic. In Arefieva's original (but pretty adequate for the reggae) lyrics (she writes all the texts and the music herself) common folk's daring and tenderness, philosophical sadness, and light sarcasm are subtly interwoven. The most vivid tracks of the album are "Nogin's Square" (last year for this song there was shot a video), "N", "Dance with a Towel", and "Limericks". But one shouldn't, though, see in Arefieva such an exhilarated, prone to the shocking affectation person. I'm sure that Arefieva will establish herself as a versatile variety performer who principally can control any audience with the innocent musical taste.