Listening Room

02 dizzy fay wz9maSongbook
Dizzy & Fay (Amanda Walther; Mark Lalama)
Independent (dizzyandfay.com)

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Walk Me Home

Chocolate Cake

I Knew It Was Love

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The dozen intriguing, piano/voice duo tunes here were all composed by Dizzy and Fay, and were produced, mixed and mastered by Dizzy. “Fay” is actually the alter ego of JUNO nominee and multiple award-winning singer/songwriter/composer Amanda Walther (familiar to many as half of the folk/roots duo Dala) and “Dizzy” is in reality, noted Canadian singer/songwriter/pianist/accordionist/producer and in-demand-performer, Mark Lalama. When Lalama and Walther met on tour, the timeline of their mutual creativity began energizing!

Walther’s dusky, sensual, pitch-perfect voice (bringing to mind Julie London) is the ideal companion for Lalama’s sensitive piano work. The opening track, Maybe Someday, inspires cinematic images of a lonely and blue lady, perched on a lone bar stool at 2am, with a final martini in hand. There are many lovely and potent musical baubles presented here, all elegantly crafted into a compelling genre and infused with compositional talent. Make no mistake – Dizzy and Fay are highly musical tunesmiths and storytellers.

Of particular beauty are Ordinary Love, replete with a moving lyric and delicious chord changes; the sweet and innocent love song Walk Me Home, which opens with a stunner of a piano solo; the sexy-cool (and a cappella) Boom and the evocative Gravity which has such a visual element, bolstered by a beautiful melodic line and lyric, that it is really a hit song looking for a film. The closer of this exquisite recording, Paris Rain, is somehow both steeped in nostalgia and breathtakingly contemporary – which could also be said of every perfectly presented, emotionally charged track here.

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