3 Nights
Top 10 of European World Music Charts 2007
4 stars
“Her band is exquisite.. but it’s [Zulya’s] rich, emotive vocals that shine. Her shimmering high register and swooping pitch-perfect lower range flutters and skips from to song to song with ease…It’s an incredibly sophisticated and brilliant instrument”,
Dan Rule, The Age, Apr 07.
5 stars
“Swinging like a Bolshevik Marlene Dietrich, Zulya and the Children of the Underground are able to strike a deft balance between melancholic sadness and the unbridled joy that is never too far away”,
Seth Jordan, Songlines, UK, Sept 07.
“She is an astonishing singer equally adept at conveying unbridled joy and melancholy, earthy urges and tenderness apparently without the need to draw breath… Uniquely satisfying”.
Dave Curry, The Canberra Times, Apr 07.
Liam Casey
The Drum
12th June 2007
I am at a loss to describe this record, being so far removed from what I usually listen to, whether by choice or professional necessity. Accustomed as I am to line-up which involve a guitarist, bassist and drummer, I’m a little thrown by album credits that mention half a dozen instruments I’ve never heard of.
But all that doesn’t matter because this album is one of those incredible few that transcend language and culture. Zulya Kamalova sings in Russian and Tatar, her local dialect, as well as performing her own songs in English for the first time. Even if you don’t know about the specifics, you can always feel what Zulya is trying to explain to you. As one would expect from music of Russian origin, a mournful tone infects the entire record, like the bitterness underpinning the sweetness of dark chocolate. Even the cheerful-sounding Children’s Bird Song is sombre, telling as it does of a bird that doesn’t want to sing because “her life is full of sorrow”.
The traditional Tatar song Red Flower Is here delivered beautifully in what I can only assume is fairly true to the original, although similarly traditional We Twelve Girls plays out over some weird kind of electronic instrument that sounds like the elastic sounds bouncing around The Knife’s Silent Shout LP. The rest of the album is largely built around strings, accordion, glockenspiel and organ, unbelievable and so wonderful that music like this has continued to grow in Australia, and it’s a truly unique listening experience.
Inpress 27.06.07
Wayne Davidson.
A native of the Tatarstan-Udmurtia region of Central Russia but living in Australia since early 90’s, singer, musician and songwriter Zulya Kamalova is something of an undiscovered treasure. The songs on 3 Nights are sung in Russian, Tatar and a little in English, making it unconventional from the get-go, but this is the music that is set to cross cultures through its beauty and warmth. Centre stage is Zulya’s warm pure voice that is powerful and vulnerable in equal measure. Her music seems to sit somewhere between Kurt Weill-ish Euro-Cabaret jazz and lullabies constructed to tear your heart out. Accordions with waltz timing get frequent airings throughout the album but Zulya keeps the pace changing, landing us into other often even more surprising territory such as the oompah of Clocks and the Russian reggae (is there such thing? There is now.) of Princess. There are many highlights on this record, prefaced by the brief music box of Nevalyashka is The Night is Dark, a sort of a chamber music lullaby that feels like it could grind the planet to a halt with sheer force of beauty. Hear how she grows is a knock-out (one of the numerous written or co-written by Kamalova) with its fascinating hard-to-pin-down rhythms vocal spirals and music somewhere between lounge and a folk dance. White Wind Tango makes me feel like wearing a beret and drinking absinth and The Wolf and the Moon may make you want to dance on the nearest café table. There’s the also (Weill-ish) swirling carousel cabaret of Love Hunter (with castanets) and the traditional but kooky We Twelve Girls propelled by mouth harp percussion. The previously mentioned Princess sounds like Marlene swanning around on uppers and include Morrissey-wishes-he-thought-of-it lyric “I have fallen in love with you for the reasons I invented myself”. This is a very personal sounding album but also feels at times like being present in a nightclub and at others in a sort of a crepuscular netherworld. The lullaby The Nights is Long, seems a perfect way to end this excellent collection with Zulya’s warm sweeping vocals enticing us to slumber.