Marianne Nowottny - afraid of me

The New York Times wrote:

An Etheral Young Voice From an Inner Neverland
by Jon Parales

Bucolic kitsch surrounded Marianne Nowottny when she performed on Wednes day night at the Knitting Factory's Old Office. Under her keyboard a boxed plastic flower illuminated by fiber-optic threads changed colors; two windup chipmunks sat on top of its box. Behind her was an electronic bird that flapped its wings and could chirp Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". In a modest way, the goofy props placed Ms. Nowottny in the sphere where her songs unfold, an artificial neverland of shimmering synthetic chords and tremulous melodies. Ms. Nowottny is 16, lives in New Jerey and has made and album, "Afraid of Me" (Abaton), and other recordings. One song, she said, was inspired by a section of the book "Chicken Soup for the Teen-Age Soul"; another was about her prom date. Yet she is far removed from the romantic bromides of chart-topping kiddie-pop. Her songs float in their own sense of time and gaze inward, drifting through private references and playful doggerel. Making her keyboard sound like a string section or music box, a harp or a set bells, Ms. Nowottny sets up rippling, two-chord patterns that speed up and slow down at whim carrying singsong melodies. Her voice swells and catches as she sings about dreamlike journeys and thoughts of love "You keep travelling west, I'll travel east/ And at the end of the world we'll meet." In some ways the songs echo the childlike, elemental side of Meredith Monk and the breathy volatility and ablique lyrics of Tori Amos. But Ms. Nowottny is mare way wardly etheral than either of them and her gusty, amorphous structures and the disembodied tones of her Concertmate keyboard add up to something all her own. Her songs sound like a teen-ager thinking for herself, heedless of the outside world.

The New York Times, Monday, August 30, 1999