View Electronic Press-KitUsually when you describe an up and coming artist, you compare them to people they sound like. Female singer/ songwriter, piano = Tori Amos or Norah Jones... Next! With Laura Distasi, a songwriter out of Boston, its far easier to describe what her music feels like. It feels like when you were a kid and you lied about something, got caught, and had to tearfully confess all. That rush of honesty--when you cried and spilled your guts and actually felt better afterwards--is kind of what it feels like to listen to her music. Somehow it is brave and harrowing and beautiful and honest all at once. The songs are intelligent. The arrangements organic and intimate. Despite being totally accessible, I can’t think of anybody she really sounds like; only people who’s music has a similar effect on me as a listener--Radiohead, Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, maybe Suzanne Vega at her warmest. There is something hopeful in sad songs; that anything worth lamenting is beautiful, or once was, or could be. Distasi seems able to articulate this better than any songwriter I have ever heard. How could you possibly describe what that sounds like?
It all started with a little girl, sitting at the piano, her legs dangling from the bench, ignoring the lesson she was supposed to be practicing and making up her own awkward compositions instead. By high school these had turned into actual songs, and so she started playing at colleges, festivals, and coffee shops around her home state of New Jersey. Then came Berklee College of Music; a lifetime of jazz, musical theater, and songwriting crammed into four quick years. She was a regular in songwriting showcases at Berklee. Simultaneously, Laura Distasi started making noise on mp3.com, where she raced to the top of the overall pop charts, among the Jewels and Michelle Branchs of the world. Laura has performed at some of the most legitimate venues in the Northeast, from Club Passim and Toad in Cambridge to CB's Gallery and Sidewalk Café in New York City, sharing the stage with Ellis Paul among others. Her songs have been featured online at several music websites, most recently garageband.com and ic-multimedia.com. Currently playing shows around Boston and the Northeast, Laura's debut album, "Winters Never Quit," was released in July of 2005.
written by
Michael Flynn, singer/songwriter
January 2004, updated