When multi-instrumentalist and native New Yorker Meredith Godreau first began performing live, she conceived the moniker Gregory and the Hawk as a way of disguising her singer/songwriter status and avoiding those inevitable associations. By the time Godreau eventually assembled an actual band and played the Brooklyn show where she was “discovered” by FatCat Records, she already had recorded and self-released an EP and album (Boats and Birds and In Your Dreams, respectively) of her exquisite acoustic bedroom Pop and boasted legions of MySpace fans who posted a dozen and a half pages of their own cover versions of her moving songs.
For the just-released Moenie and Kitchi, Godreau and her current band (guitarist Mike McGuire and multi-instrumentalist Susan Ambrose) were joined in the studio by a host of contributors but the lion’s share of the album’s instrumentation was provided by producer Adam Pierce, taking a busman‘s holiday from his role as Mice Parade frontman. The result is an engaging set of songs that drift along on Godreau’s intimate Pop vibe, shimmering with the insistent familiarity of tomorrow’s Old Navy commercial and propelled by her compellingly whispered vocals and inscrutably crafted lyrics.
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This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2008.
