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Rykarda Parasol
For Blood And Wine
Self-Released
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Link: http://www.rykardaparasol.com

Rykarda Parasol sounds like a great American Gothic novel reads. Brockden Brown in essence but take out the madness and psychopathy, For Blood And Wine raises a glass to the lost and lonely.

A pre-noir feeling, it’s the long pre-dawn drive across the basin after a night being buried in the dark underbelly of the Bayou. It’s the grayness that blends into army green wool that hide out in the backstreets of Warsaw. It’s the fog that blinds Frisco and the smell of gunpowder permeated on the barstools.

There is a degree of cabaret within Parasol’s demeanor. “One For Joy!” sings like Marlene Dietrich, dominating over a dragging worker’s beat. “One for joy, and one for sorrow,” one of the more realistic songs about the true spirit of life. Whichever it is, someone is going to drink to something.

For most of the album, Parasol carries a thick skin, but there are moments of fragility. With Parasol’s range of gruff to feminine, it’s as fragile as Concrete Blonde was sincere. “Hold Back The Night” is a combination of haunting retrospection and beautiful dialogue that blends folklore and conviction that will keep you on the edge of your seat like a child being told an incredible tale filled with adventure and mystique.

Although the album carries that lost highway sound and does not really deviate for from it, there is not a bad tune on this album. Strike it up to the band’s passion to have the sound stay true to the colors of the album’s theme. Parasol is one of the more interesting vocalists of the 21st Century that will make you shiver like a cold wind blew in as much as hypnotically entrance you.

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