Art is interdisciplinary. Music historians note that rock legends like David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, and Mick Jagger combined their gifts in writing, graphic design, theatre and music into multi-media spectacles that are feasts for the eyes and ears.
Former Luscious Jackson lead singer Jill Cunniff exercises her multitude of skills to great affect on her latest album City Beach. It’s a lively journey through the eyes of a young woman aware of the beatific and sometimes horrid images that her home city of New York conjures.
Cunniff was born and raised in New York City, and spent her adolescents in Greenwich Village, soaking up the ethnic environment and multi-cultural forays into jazz, punk, and experimental music Village clubs are known for. At the age of thirteen, she had a birthday party at the now defunct CBGB’s in the Bowery, parents in tow. She hung out at St. Marks Sounds and Rat Cage Record shops, where her friends The Beastie Boys first started selling records. The intensity of the Village had a major impact on Cunniff, inspiring her to pick up the guitar and make her way into the Village club scene. I spoke to her by phone at her home in Brooklyn.
“I tried learning music in college” states Cunniff, “but the techniques were too traditional. I gained more by finding chord changes on the guitar by accident.”
Cunniff originally attended college as an art major.
“My writing is heavily influenced by painting. The art of painting isn’t in the main picture; it’s in the use of colors for light and shade, the background of the picture - all of the things that bring out the featured points of the painting. Writing lyrics is a lot like that, so I approach the paper as canvas, using words to fill in both the subtle and the obvious. Like music, paintings are composed, so I try to compose all the elements of a song as I write.”
City Beach is an eclectic effort, mixing styles from Brazilian jazz to alternative rock into an intoxicating brew of mood pieces. It’s difficult to tell whether the album was planned this way or if it happened organically.
“To a degree, the concept for the album was to work in several styles when I first started writing it,” Cunniff said. “New York is a mix of so many elements; it would be difficult to do it any other way. However, the process of recording and collaboration always brings surprises and that adds to the freshness of the music. I was fortunate to have people with me who were as in to the concept as I was, so there was a good groove going on between us throughout.”
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