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Excerpt
from "Scene & Heard" column by Steve Lemcke
From The Burlington Free Press, Thursday, October 24, 1996
Nato: The singer, not the treaty organization
This is about as close to foreign affairs as this column is
ever going to get. Oh, I've got the brainpower to handle it, people - I've
been in
grad school a long time, after all - but the music scene in Burlington is much more
important than any of that foreign-policy stuff. I mean, some of those guys don't even
speak English...
Singer-songwriter-guitarist Nato (born Nate Orshan) has been active in
the Burlington music scene in a variety of capacities since he moved to Burlington way
back in 1980.
Nato played keyboards with a band, The Lawyers, from 1984 to '86, played keyboards again
with The Switch in the late '80s, more keyboards with The Cuts in '90 and '91, and most
recently has played bass with Dave Keller's blues band. Nato is now on his own, doing the
singer-songwriter thing, this time with an acoustic guitar in one hand. In the other is
his tape, which is on sale at Pure Pop for about $6.
"Soap and Ammonia" offers eight home-recorded songs and live tracks; most of the
songs were digitally mastered to DAT by Joe Egan at Eclipse Studios in Hinesburg, and
sound as clean as its title suggests. The opener "Run Away" sets the tone for the whole
tape: simple, sparse folk-influenced songs with Nato and his guitar, singing about lust,
love, life, "Spies," and America's
favorite criminal trial (and less favorite civil trial), the OJ Simpson case (aptly titled
"Murder").
Less topical stuff, like things in his
apartment, become additional fodder for his writing. The opening song gets done twice,
first at home and then again live, but sounds pretty much the same either way.
A bit more lushly orchestrated is the track "Stuck,"
a Cuts "nugget" that, alas, did not make it onto last spring's "Good
Citizen: Burlington Does Burlington" compilation, nicely explained with a bit of
taped material from the Good Citizen Radio Hour's host Andrew Smith (used with permission,
of course). That same tune is stripped down in a solo guitar rendition, recorded live at
Café No No last May. "Judy" is a
solidly executed song, strengthened by a good riff with plenty of jangle at the end.
Most of the songs resemble a bargain-basement Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson
"unplugged." The guitar playing is never too tricky, at times reminiscent of Ani
Difranco-style strumming, but never that funky or hyper-actively strenuous. But a good
vocal performance pushes the tape along, even if it does get a little redundant at times.
"Spies" dragged a bit too long for
me, one change too many, but I do like the electric guitar and the feel of a full band.
Check out Nato tonight at Café No No, or give him the on-line equivalent of a ring at
info@natosongs.com.
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"Scene
& Heard" ©1996 The Burlington Free Press.
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