MP3 Steven Kattenbraker - ROCK: Americana

Progressive skillfully crafted lyrical melodies that may get stuck in your head and refuse to go away.

10 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Americana, ROCK: Progressive Rock



Details:
An emerging acoustic artist who truly understands and ably crafts all aspects of song. Steven Kattenbraker's self-produced release is a masterful blend of lyricism and melody, all bound in a sonic landscape with such grace and subtlety that it seems instantly familiar. Catchy? Of course, but in a way that exceeds mere accessibility and verges on timelessness. Kattenbraker's introspective lyrics are delivered by a voice that is oft described as sultry, sweet, cynical - and frequently all at the same time. While his textured and interwoven melodies would stand alone as guitar/singer offerings, they are transformed into true art pieces with the melding of carefully constructed, expansive electronic and 'found' sounds.



"Steven Kattenbraker creates softly sung, pastoral scenes of contemplative lonliness, somewhat indicative of his earlier home in the Midwest (he now resides in southwest Washington)...a great, light touch with his acoustic guitar, aspirated singing style, and atmospheric accoutrements. That atmosphere is the spice by which he seasons the long dusty folk travels that the listener is treated to. It's more folk than country, less rock than americana. Songs like "Santiago" are bleak and all the better because of it, with seagulls whistling desolately in the background.

"Pinus" has a strange and slow electronic freakout section in the middle of it which is more Red House Painters or American Analog Set than Elliott Smith. And that hushed atmosphere in which his songs exist is at once both familiar and intricately unique.
|--excerpts from shmat.com



" As I sit here in the July heat like a sauna with a garrote, I listen to the winter tales of Steven Kattenbraker. Part Eliot Smith, part L. Cohen, as run through the production wringer of Daniel Ash, his vauge plaintive woes are breathily sung out in the standard double tracked fashion that has come to instill a melonhcoly as much as the tremolo pedal has.
Kattenbraker's baritone voice is pleasant and soothing. The guitar work sweet and mellow and, might I add, deftly played. As a whole, this eponymous CD is not unlike drinking chamomile tea at the end of a particularly heartwrenching day."
|--- Music Liberation Project-A Journal of Portland Music Aug/Sept. '04

"...this is a songwriter to take seriously. His self-titled release delivers poetic lyrics...accompanied by an expertly played acoustic guitar. Check him out now; he'll restore your faith in the singer-songwriter genre."
|--- earvolution.com

Steven Kattenbraker would make an excellent masseur. Throughout this self-titled album, he prods gently but insistently, persistently. The tension you feel during your first listen is his dusky but irrepressible voice loosening your mind and body...his skillful but unobtrusive acoustic guitar often amounts to the equivalent of gradually-warming lubricant between his palms and your skin -- his voice and your feelings...The strange, wispy sounds that occasionally permeate the soundscape... as in the excellent instrumental ["Finally"], help him to work you all over. He gets the low end. He gets the murky things. He hits all the important places...
You'll listen a second time just to extend the feeling you got as you finished your first spin, and you'll listen a third time because there's a lot to love here. And when you're feeling tense, when you're just desperately, painfully tied in knots, body and soul... Kattenbraker will be there to help." |---splendidezine.com