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Jonathan Widran

CASHAVELLY, Meditation Through Gunfire

Sometimes when an album is so epic, emotionally overwhelming and thematically expansive, there’s there are those one or two phrases which stand out, provoke us or make us laugh, draw us in and invite us to keep immersing until we “get” the whole picture.


On her provocatively titled fourth album Meditation Through Gunfire, the wildly insightful, surreally intense yet angelic - and deeply empowering - singer/songwriter Cashavelly weaves a few phrases into the lilting, hypnotic and deeply “Royal Blue” which helped me latch onto and helped me understand the rest of her stylistically diverse, highly theatrical 16 track opus for the brilliant defiant declaration of strength and independence it is.


After asking a conniving man, “Well guess who saved her from you?,” she sings the unforgettably hilarious, “Guess who will always cock block you blue?” As if that wasn’t enough to make us realize Cashavelly is a badass talent who utters truth in every line she writes and sings, that same song offers this harsh, artful couplet: “She’ll spend years tasting your rancid kiss, deciphering her intuition’s heiroglyphics.” Damn, girlfriends, you better heed this warning! Sharing wit, confidence and crafty diaries of survival and takedowns of straying males like no female artist since Alanis Morrisette, Cashevelly continues to fulfill the promise of Rolling Stone’s 2018 designation of her as an “Artist to  Watch,” presumably bestowed upon her 2018 album Hunger.


Cashavelly followed that gem with a dual album/film project in 2021 titled Metamorphosis, a feature length narrative dance film which took her rapt audience through the transitions she experienced on the journey to explore her fears, her doubts and herself.


The dance element is a nod to her early days as a ballet prodigy taught by legendary dancers, a path that was making perfect sense until a debilitating spinal injury led to her rebirth as a writer and musical artist. Dance’s loss is clearly indie music’s gain once again, as Cashavelly throws caution to the wind and ignites fire upon fire (including a moody, bluesy, hard as nails tune titled “The Fire”), from the infectious tribal hypnosis and ultimate rocking of the infectious opener “More Than God” through the ethereal and haunting first lead single “Rewrite” (an attempt to try to find a man to atone for what her birth father lacked) and on through the offbeat choral cheerleading anthem “Prom.”


A short review can’t truly capture the full emotional/spiritual impact of an album full of so many robust, poetic riches – so maybe start with the aforementioned tracks, latch onto a few killer lines and hang on for the adventure from there!   

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