By Anastasia Pantsios
By Anastasia Pantsios, COOL Cleveland – “Christa Ebert calls herself Uno Lady when she performs, a hint that she creates all her music by herself using only her voice as the raw material. With just a microphone and a mixer that loops her vocals, she produces clouds of lush, layered sound that refer to familiar pop themes and lyrics but utterly transform them. Jaunty melodies and catchy phrases pile up into towering edifices that are startling in their grandeur, considering their modest building blocks.
It’s hard to even tell if she has a highly trained voice or the girlish voice of an engagingly uncertain amateur; her delivery can be in turn knowing and wide-eyed, while she alternately buries a phrase by multiplying it or strips away everything to lay it bare in all its vulnerable nakedness.
Ebert released a tape almost exactly five years ago called I Really Like Genetics But I’d Rather Have a Good Time, followed by Tacocat in 2010.Back then she was in the early stages of exploring the striking and confident music she makes now. She hasn’t been too speedy about getting a new release out because she’s been business with work and school, like many of us. But when she landed a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, it gave her the wherewithal to synthesize her evolving ideas into a new recording, a full-length album (available in vinyl and CD) called Amateur Hour.
She says, ‘If it wasn’t for the fellowship, this would have taken another 10 years to make. Instead I am already working on the planning stages for the next record.’
That is a reason to rejoice. Meanwhile, she’ll celebrate the release of Amateur Hour at the Euclid Tavern at a show also featuring New Zealand country singer/songwriter Delaney Davidson and Cleveland surf/garage rockers the Shale Satans. ”