Erica Smith

Blonde powerhouse and crackerjack band blaze through Americana, Beatlepop, jazz, bossa nova, and soul in a song cycle of love, loss, and reluctant hope (with a dash of bliss thrown in for good measure).

With the release of Snowblind, Erica Smith and the 99 Cent Dreams find themselves suddenly placed in the tradition of restless and daring records that have resulted from shattering loss. It wasn’t part of the plan.

In the early stages of recording, Snowblind was loosely conceived as a song suite in which the occasional lyric would glint with some kind of snow imagery. It was cruelly ironic when, in the middle of the night during the blizzard of January 2005, Erica’s boyfriend died suddenly as they walked together on a Hudson River pier. Reeling from this devastating loss, Erica sequestered for a year, continuing to rehearse with the band but neither recording nor performing. During that time Erica completed several more songs to bring the album into full focus not only as a conceit, but also as an elegy.

Sonically speaking, Snowblind will feel familiar and welcoming to any fan of Erica Smith’s 2002 folk/Americana release Friend or Foe––the album that prompted The Village Voice to declare “I think I love her” and earned airplay and in-studios across the U.S. on AAA radio as well as on Charlie Gillett’s renowned BBC London show “The Sound of the World.” Both Friend or Foe and Snowblind are approachable-sounding singer/songwriter records, but Snowblind is more muscular, with a warm, full-band glow.

The wintry imagery of Snowblind is balanced out by other songs that give off considerable heat: an affair begins on a hot summer night in Riverside Park; lovers stand on a city terrace, listening to a crackling thunderstorm in the middle of the night; an impish sweetheart, like a firefly, appears out of nowhere only after the sun goes down.