Four Little Sisters

This all-female band is part of a vibrant, alternative string music community in San Francisco that has turned out new groups, such as the Musical Art Quintet (reviewed in Songlines #85), able to follow in the footsteps of the big beasts of the scene: the Kronos Quartet and Turtle Island Quartet. Violinist Irene Sazer was a founding member of the latter ensemble and she brings their spirit of improvisation-based genre-crossing to Real Vocal String Quartet, which she formed seven years ago.

On Four Little Sisters, their second album, RSVQ perform a diverse array of tunes, from Regina Spektor and Gilberto Gil covers to a Louisiana Cajun tune ‘Allons a Lafayette’ and an 18th century hornpipe. The group and solo performances throughout are impressive and the arrangements are impeccable. Spektor’s ‘Machine’ is given a tightly wound, dramatic rendering using plucked strings and extended string techniques. Both of the album’s two original songs have vim and vigour. ‘Homage to Oumou’, a song for Malian singer Oumou Sangaré by Sazer, balances four-part vocals on a rich string sound with stylish soloing by individual players, while ‘Elephant Dreams’, by second violinist Alisa Rose, is a piece of classical swing. But the sheer polish of this set supports the nagging feeling that RVSQ are at heart a sophisticated session band (a role they have indeed played, for Canadian singer-songwriter Feist). The band’s sound isn’t as well developed or rooted as their more senior contemporaries and their signature layered voices-and-strings sound has its limits.