Dear Nora
Issue #30
This is No Home (Magic Marker)
By Andrea Benvenuto
Published: December 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
How does a band with only one permanent member manage to break up? It seems unlikely — pointless, even. Since 1999, Katy Davidson has recorded one album with her band in Portland (their debut) and an EP and another album without them in San Francisco, all under the name Dear Nora. And now she’s announced that There is No Home, another mainly solo effort, will be the third and last Dear Nora album.
The title alone is unsettling: a good descriptor for both the career arc and the haunting music of this project. Two instrumental tracks open the album, their experimentalism made beautiful with the anticipation of eventually hearing Davidson’s voice and, with any luck, her thoughts.
“See me work my sexual vibe with my hour-long psychedelic thunder jam,” she later sings on “Solo Wanderer.” The lyric is a goof but speaks of what keeps this album vibrant: the expectation of resolution that never really happens. Five or six of the 16 tracks, like “Emily” and “The Flats of Irony,” are conventionally pretty or catchy songs, while much of the rest is dark and strange — from the faux open-mic style of “Frank, the Witchdoctor” to the aptly titled “What a Weird Cactus.”
Ultimately, this feels like the work of a potentially great musician whose livelihood was unexpectedly cut short, rather than one who’s deliberately choosing to call it quits. Dear Nora may be over, but Katy Davidson still has work left to do. Here’s to the postscript, whatever that may be.
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