i & r

Imogen Heap can reach for highest stars
New Standard - South Coast Today
1.99

Sitting on the outdoor patio of a trendy club on a chilly Los Angeles evening, UK songstress Imogen Heap notices a young woman struggling to light her cigarette on a ceiling-high heater. Graciously coming to her aid, Heap stretches her willowy 6-foot frame and easily accommodates the grateful patron.

"I'm multi-talented, you know," she says in her clipped British-prep-school accent, grinning as she sits down and resumes a conversation. Without a trace of conceit in her voice, she offers the comment jokingly, but she is right, after all. While it's her statuesque height and runway model looks that first attract attention, it's Heap's edgy, insightful compositions and quirk-filled, dynamic voice that are seducing the ears of alternative music fans on two continents.

Just 21, Heap is another of a growing number of young female artists gaining recognition as alternative pop purveyors with an independent vision. Although comparisons with other successful performers such as Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette are inevitable, Heap just shrugs them off. "It doesn't really bother me at the end of the day; it doesn't matter who I'm compared to -- it's about what's in my music."

Growing up in a house filled with instruments, Heap was at the piano as soon as she could reach the keys but wasn't allowed to take lessons, she remembers, "until I could reach the pedals."

Later, at school in the Essex countryside, Heap became accustomed to performing for parents and students not only because of her emerging talents but because she was often caught being "naughty" and was smart enough to broker recitals to get out of being punished.

Halfway through an extensive U.S. tour to support her debut release, and preparing for a video shoot, Heap has come a long way from performing to escape her headmistress' wrath. The recently released "i Megaphone" has been garnering airplay nationwide on influential radio stations and opened doors to other opportunities, including co-writing songs with the hot English band, Urban Species.

A potent sonic cocktail that moves from chunky grooves to classical hybrids and careens back to sinewy guitar riffs, "i Megaphone" is a clever anagram of the artist's name, and somehow shakes the sounds all together and pours out a soulful, intoxicating blend of pop.

Beyond the compositions, Heap already demonstrates a self-assured writing style that brims with ironic subtleties, unrepentant passion and intriguing innuendo. Sung with looping vocal stylings that dip and glide, the songs -- like the CD's title itself -- reveal that this is an artist who wants to be heard, but on her own terms.

When asked about her musical influences, Heap downplays the impact that rock or pop had on her growing up in England.

"Because everyone was playing music in our house, there was never really any silence, and not much room for radio. Ever since I was little, I knew I had to write songs. But I certainly never imagined all this would be happening," she observes wryly.

As a teen-ager, she began writing in earnest. Even though she now dismisses those early attempts as "dreadful," Heap was still wringing out every word to great effect. One special tune she performed at a school assembly exposed an affair between her boyfriend and best friend for all her classmates. "Wicked, don't you think?" She smiles.

The songs on "i Megaphone" aim for impact as well. Though Heap asserts that her lyrics have been grabbed out of the air, where they were just waiting to be used, the listener hears songs with an identity, density and thoughtfulness that seem rendered by intense observation -- and by someone with at least a few wrinkles.

In "Angry Angel," for example, Heap laments a personal battle against obsession and compulsion, letting saw-edged guitar riffs seemingly speak for the disparate voices in her head.

"Whatever" takes the just-been-jilted vibe of Carly Simon's '70s hit, "You're So Vain," into the '90s with a cool iteration that takes on an ex-lover but doesn't forget how to groove.

With lyrics, "Madness just moved out my shadow," "Shine" speaks of perseverance and personal illumination, while the sonata-sounding "Candlelight" evokes flickering shadows and the old family piano in her father's house where she composed the song.

"Oh Me, Oh My" allows Heap to wail soulfully about finding meaning and trying to see God in the everyday.

Later, back on the patio following a solo acoustic performance for which she played cuts from "i Megaphone" and joked between songs in an easy manner that was equal parts English schoolgirl and 19th-century coquette, Heap comments, "I'm actually quite spiritual. For me, God is in all the missing edges in life."

Although Heap mines those empty corners richly for lyrical content, considering her strong, evocative performance that night and her compelling new release, it's clear this chanteuse isn't lacking anything. Stretching to light the cigarette was nothing -- she is one new performer who can keep reaching for the stars.