GIRLPOSSE.COM (Love this from a young reviewer.)
Florida-based singer/songwriter Michele Ari doesn't sound young. No, that's not meant to be an insult. A quick glance at the pictures on her site (http://www.micheleari.com) reveales her to be a youthful, attractive woman and not an old hag. But she's not a kid unlike most of the female singers today.
Back in the '70s and '80s, there were no rocker girls; there were only women. Sure, exceptions like the Go-Go's and the Bangles did exist, and Madonna was already a star barely out of her teens. However, for the most part the industry signed grown-up chicks.
Ari is a flashback to those days when female musicians were mature and somewhat classy, the complete opposite of babies such as Britney Spears and teen-angst monsters like Courtney Love.
The music on Ari's debut EP, 85th and Nowhere, has a dusty, low-fi sound; the guitars sound brittle and mysterious, especially on the opening track, My Sleeping Beauty. This is not rock & roll for kids in the sense that they'll have no sense of identification with the enigmatic lyrics and the vintage left-of-the-dial rhythms that Ari is reaching back for. You can feel Ari's emotions building up with each track, setting them loose with the disconsolate Pretty, which Patsy Cline would've crooned if she were still alive today.
This is a small record with big feelings, and they reverberate through the skin upon Ari's gently sung every word.
