Charlotte Martin – Stromata: Am I an Inch Away from Heaven? (Gap Year, Pt. 4)

Artist: Charlotte Martin
Album: Stromata
Year: 2006
Grade: A

In Brief: One of the greatest piano-based singer-songwriters of the 2000s was, sadly, not on my radar at the time. Boasting an impressive vocal range that verges on operatic, a knack for coming up with keyboard melodies that are catchy, rhythmic, and haunting all at once, and a tendency to experiment with drum machines and other percussive sounds, Charlotte Martin was (and still is) a triple threat and then some. I like to think that if things had played out differently, some of her poppier material could have given Vanessa Carlton a run for her money, or that her more dramatic and experimental side could have caught the ear of a lot of Tori Amos fans. But I guess having a lot of people not know how amazingly creative you are is the risk you run for making music in a DIY fashion as a genuinely independent artist.

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Part of the fun of my “Gap Year” project was getting album recommendations from friends that had been put out by artists I’d never even heard of, but whose overall styles these friends figured might be in my wheelhouse. One of the absolute best “Nailed it 100%!” recommendations that I got was Charlotte Martin, a piano-based singer/songwriter who put out a pretty amazing streak of albums in the 2000s and early 2010s. I went from asking “Who the heck is Charlotte Martin?” to “How the heck have I never heard of Charlotte Martin?” in almost no time, because she’s truly that good. Of course, the friend who recommended her 2006 album Stromata as a starting point knew that I was a big fan of Tori Amos‘s early work, that I tended to like Kate Bush when she wasn’t too out there, and that Vienna Teng, who herself was heavily influenced by Amos, is my favorite singer/songwriter of all time. So this one was basically a slam dunk.

The nutshell history on Charlotte Martin is that she grew up in central Illinois, went to college in the late 90s (so I guess we’re about the same age), majored in opera, recorded a couple albums (one of which never got a proper release) and a handful of EPs independently in the early 2000s, then signed to a major label and released her proper debut, On Your Shore, in 2004. It was a fantastic showcase of her talents to the wider world, and as far as I can tell, that was her one shot at mainstream success – she even scored an opening slot for Liz Phair and The Cardigans – but if it translated to anything more than a few soundtrack placements and guest vocal slots on other people’s records, I certainly didn’t catch wind of it at the time. Not that I really had my finger on the pulse of popular music or indie music back then, but still, I’m bummed that an artist of this caliber could have completely slipped under my radar at a time when I was getting into what felt like tons of other piano-focused artists who also happened to have a flair for the dramatic when it came to storytelling. Her follow-up album, Stromata, was released on her co-producer and then-husband Ken Andrews‘ label in 2006, and I’m almost certain I would have been as floored on first listen back then as I was 2023. It’s easily the best of her albums that I’ve heard so far, effortlessly juggling pretty much everything she’s good at. Throughout this album you’ll hear the big, pounding chords and fatalistic tone of her more dramatic, anthemic work, the breezy choruses of her more pop-focused songs, her background in classical and opera creeping into some of the artsier pieces, and even a bit of mad genius when it comes to drum programming and other synthesized sounds, at one point even bordering on industrial music. An independently released album with this much range could easily fall into incoherence without a clear artistic vision and some strong guidance in the production department. Yet this one easily stands beside On Your Shore in terms of its sonic consistency, with the track order making perfect sense instead of switching jarringly from one style to the next, to the point where if you had me listen to the two albums back-to-back and try to guess which one came out on a major label, I’d be at a total loss.

Lyrically, I suppose it would be fair to characterize Stromata as a darker and angstier album than its predecessor. While its name literally means the plural form of “stroma”, the tissue structure of our internal organs, the title is meant to imply connectivity in more of a spiritual sense – not necessarily in a warm, fuzzy, “Let’s all join hands and celebrate our togetherness” sort of way, but more in a “Hey, maybe all these crazy things that are happening to me are connected and have some sort of greater purpose sort of way”. A lot of the writing seems to suggest a woman going through a gauntlet of emotional and existential issues, and ultimately coming out stronger and wiser on the other side. At times it’s a visceral listening experience, though I wouldn’t say it ever crosses the line into genuinely upsetting territory – whatever trauma she’s been through tends to get expressed in more poetic terms than blunt, confrontational ones. It’s one of those albums where the mood she’s trying to convey often has me spellbound from the opening bars of a song, even if I don’t end up working out where the inspiration for the song might have come from until several listens later. With 14 songs, and clocking in at around 55 minutes, it’s definitely a dense album. I know some people may be wary of that description, since the 2000s had their fair share of unnecessarily long albums that got released toward the tail end of the “CD era”, before digital music took over and the overall length of albums seemed to get shorter now that there wasn’t the temptation to fill all the space available on a physical medium. But Stromata earns the extra time that it asks the listener to spend with it, and as a result, it’s one of the meatier records from this time period that I feel like I’m gonna be able to go back to time and time again, and hold each song up as its own unique gem worthy of closer examination, rather than thinking “Jeez, when is this thing gonna end?” somewhere around the 30 or 40-minute mark.

Despite my unfamiliarity with Stromata and with Charlotte Martin’s work in general before last year, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that she’s some long-forgotten artist from a bygone era who made a valiant attempt to pick up a wider audience and then disappeared into obscurity. She’s still actively making music today, with the EP Knives & Bouquets having come out last summer, just as I was starting to get into her. Post-Stromata, it seemed like her tendency was to space out the traditional album releases a bit more and come up with more abstract, improvisational, instrumental piano records in between. She also made the decision to retire from touring in the mid-2010s, and she’s taken up voice teaching in the years since, with her students featured as co-writers on the aforementioned EP, as well as a rumored double album that’s supposed to be out at some point in 2024. So the legacy of this beguilingly wonderful artist is still being written. All of that being said, I’m gonna stick with Stromata as the best possible entry point for curious new listeners thus far. And I’m excited to finally dig deep into the nooks and crannies of its quirkiest and eeriest songs here in this review, and get a better sense of what connects it all together.

INDIVIDUAL TRACKS:

1. Stromata
Charlotte is speaking my language right from the get-go on this album – huge, dire piano chords that are almost gothic in their tone, weighty, Peter Gabriel-esque drum programming, and bits of vocalization here and there that remind me fleetingly of the aforementioned Tori Amos and Kate Bush, maybe even a little bit of the late Dolores O’Riordan. Charlotte’s lyrics feel very weary and weighed down, like she’s constantly drawn back in by the gravity of a relationship she cannot escape – or that she won’t let the other person escape, depending on how you interpret certain lines. The idea of interconnectedness suggested by the song’s (and album’s title) seems to come through in the fatalistic notion that these people are connected even though they may no longer wish to be. You can hear both frustration and resignation in her performance, though it wraps up at the very end with a relatively peaceful piano coda, after the heavy percussion falls away. This is a great opening course to an immensely satisfying meal that is going to get even better from here.
Grade: A-

2. Cut the Cord
Charlotte’s affinity for strong percussion sounds comes to the forefront on this song, which sets aside her usual piano in favor of an almost tribal-sounding drum cadence pounded out on an array of different instruments that I’m assuming includes the djembe and the tabla. I can hear the metallic, kid’s-toy melody of what sounds like a kalimba in there, too – and of course there’s the dramatic and borderline sassy lead vocal from Charlotte to give the song a strong melodic push despite it sounding like it’s just a bunch of banging on things at first. Once again, she seems to be approaching the topic of an exasperating relationship with just enough ambiguity to make you unsure of whether she wants to stay or leave – perhaps she wrote this at a time when she herself was unsure. “We’re too weak, too strong to cut the cord”, she declares in the chorus, putting the classic can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em dilemma in her own unique words. By the time the bridge comes around and she’s begging for “Just enough to satisfy me/Just enough to gratify me/Just enough to blaze your fire through my desert”, there’s this cacophony of voices that starts to rumble up in the background, getting cut off just before they can turn into an unnerving foreground element. So yeah, this song was clearly born out of something tumultuous or even traumatic – and I love how artfully it’s expressed. There are tons of amazing songs in her catalog, I would go on to discover, but for me so far, this is the one to beat.
Grade: A+

3. Drip
The lighter melody coming from the electric piano at this one, which has a slight metallic sheen to it, contrasts strongly with the slow, deep, thumping percussion – it’s almost like trying to mix oil and water, and that may well be the point. The sound of the traditional piano comes in at the refrain, where Charlotte declares, “You can’t start letting me/Can’t start feeling me slide”, almost as if she’s being run ragged by some sort of taskmaster who expects her to keep sweating it out over some grueling task he’s assigned to her. I’m definitely getting some Tori Amos-level angst from this one – combine one of the more abstract, cinematic confessions from Little Earthquakes with the electronic experimentation of To Venus and Back and you’ll start to get the idea. The song gets more twisted as it gets deeper in, seemingly to imply that she’s contorting herself into knots trying to please a lover with a wandering eye so that he won’t go so far as to actually cheat on her. This is clearly not a healthy status quo for a relationship, but she seems ready to fiercely defend whatever scraps of attention and validation she can get before this person’s attention inevitably turns toward someone else.
Grade: A-

4. Little Universe
This is the track that I find myself wanting to describe as “borderline industrial”. At first, the skittering electronic beat makes me think of Kid A-era Radiohead, but then these dark, dissonant, scraping sounds come in, almost as if we’re trapped under ice and hearing some sort of heavy machinery being moved overhead, and it’s chilling in the best possible way. This one’s even more extreme than “Cut the Cord” in terms of how it uses percussion (programmed or at least heavily distorted, in this case) to establish rhythm while Charlotte’s voice is the only melodic guide at first – she slowly brings in a skeletal keyboard melody, but it’s the gorgeous yet ominous chant from multiple layers of her voice that allows us to feel our way through the song in an almost pitch-dark environment. It’s almost like a siren song calling out from dark, stormy seas, compelling someone not to “choose these half-truths over our little universe”. It seems to be a song of willful denial, asking someone to stay in the isolated little world she’s created for the two of them instead of asking honest questions, and venturing out above the surface where her devious manipulations might be brought into the harsh light of day. This is not at all what you’d anticipate if you were merely given the elevator pitch that Charlotte was a classically trained singer who wrote most of her material on the piano. It subverts expectations in the creepiest possible ways, and I adore it for that.
Grade: A+

5. Civilized
“Piano rock” is a term I’d use to loosely describe some of Charlotte’s music, and I’d say it’s spot on for this track in particular. More traditional rock drums are heard here instead of programming, and it’s a lively performance from drummer Joey Waronker (if that name rings a bell, it’s because he’s worked with artists like Beck, R.E.M., and Thom Yorke, among many others). Charlotte’s playing packs a real punch as she spits venom toward a contemptible person who seems to be hitting below the belt in a fight with her. Maybe it’s some sort of a lovers’ quarrel (which would fit with the heavily conflicted song cycle thus far), or maybe he’s some sort of public figure who fears having his dark deeds exposed. The plea “Why can’t we keep this civilized?” almost sounds like she’s throwing an attempt to silence her back in his face. Clearly this is a contemptible person who wants to maintain the appearance of decorum in public while continuing to treat her with cruelty in private, calling her character into question just for daring to speak up – this almost sounds like a case of #MeToo a good ten years before that movement had a hashtag. There are some choice quips here as she rightfully calls the guy out, but the best one comes at the end of the chorus: “Not saying you deserve to die/Just saying you deserve yourself.”
Grade: A

6. A Hopeless Attempt
Charlotte’s back to the electric keys on this deceptively soothing song that sounds like a downright lullaby in comparison to the sheer aggression of the last few tracks. Read the lyrics and it’s anything but, though – this one appears to be a straight shot of bitterness disguised as something far more docile. While the narrative is a bit abstract, it seems to play out in the way of a breakup or a betrayal – some sort of situation where she’s been deeply hurt by someone she loved and she’s reminding herself of the reasons she needs to get over them pronto, but she’s still stuck with these volatile mixed emotions toward them while they seem to have happily moved on to their next fling. The dissonance between the music and lyrics is huge here, with her performance sounding like something out of a fairytale, while the lyrics may as well be casting some sort of a dark curse on the person she’s singing to.
Grade: B+

7. Four Walls
A part of me is hesitant to call any of Charlotte’s music “pop” because it seems reductive – this is an artist who definitely had more ambitious than to be the next Top 40 starlet. But damn, she sure knew her way around a catchy chorus, and that talent is showcased quite well as the drum programming gallops forward on this track’s propulsive, up-tempo chorus, which originally appeared on her 2005 EP Veins and which bore repeating here, as it was probably her best shot at a breakout single. This one’s got just the right mix of 90s alt-pop angst and mid-2000s indie pop quirkiness, with a bit of time signature trickiness as the otherwise straight-ahead 4/4 rhythm transitions from verse to chorus being the only element that I can imagine potentially tripping up its chances at being heard by the wider mainstream. Their loss, because we’ve got another deliciously deceptive song on our hands here – is it about two people finding their way to each other in dark and uncertain times? Or is it about one person using the other person’s isolation and uncertainty as a tool to manipulate them and keep them as a prisoner? How would you interpret “Gonna feel my way around you/And then you’re gonna get down on your knees/And grow accustomed to the darkness/And see what you’re supposed to see” – as a command, or as an acknowledgment of a mutual coping mechanism? Man, this is a tricky one! She insists throughout the song that “I know what I’m doing”, but as she trails off at the end with the confession that “I don’t”, I have to wonder if this is all just bravado, an attempt to take control in a situation that is beyond either participant’s ability to do so.
Grade: A-

8. Inch
I feel like we get a break from the angst on this elegant ballad – it’s still quite melancholy, but the longing expressed seems more genuine. It’s almost a solo piece from Charlotte, with her cascading piano melody and the pure passion in her voice driving it forward. There’s minimal percussion here and there, and bits of chimes and other keyboard sounds, but her piano remains in the spotlight, and deservedly so. This song seems to be a “so close, but so far” lament about a relationship that came so close to becoming something far deeper, but that failed to blossom due to either a lack of communication, or an absence of interest on the other person’s part. Almost getting to touch that dream and then having it yanked away sounds like pure torture the way she describes it – being “An inch away from heaven” might as well be hell, as far as she’s concerned. Even though her lyrics are quite fatalistic, there’s a sense of innocence to it that I find refreshing – it has a youthful feel to it without coming across as immature, like it’s looking back at those awkward, emotionally overloaded early years of being inexperienced in love and wanting so badly to know what it’s like, only to keep getting denied your first true experience of it. And of course it’s natural when you’re in that situation to overthink all the possible reasons why it’s not happening – is the other person oblivious to how deeply you’ve fallen for them? Are they lying to themselves? Or is there some other life circumstance getting in the way? Is it your own fault nothing’s happening, or is it just a fate you’re going to have to resign yourself to? My high school and college self could certainly have related to this one. I definitely don’t miss those years – but listening to this song makes it feel like I could reach out and touch them, like they’re not already more than half my life in the rear view mirror.
Grade: A

9. Keep Me in Your Pocket
A pattern that’s starting to become familiar as I listen more deeply to this album, even though it plays out in different ways each time I notice it, is how Charlotte will often start a song with nothing but percussion and then bring in the piano later. She does it here over a light, syncopated beat that almost sounds like it was sampled from just tapping on things with her hands, maybe shaking a tambourine here and there, certainly a sharp contrast with the more dark, dense, and exotic sounds she’s done this sort of thing with previously. When the piano comes in, it gives the song more of a jazzy, almost improvisational feel, and the playfulness factor gets bumped up by a bit of spoken word leading out of the chorus. This is one of those songs that is meant to be a bit flirty but that shies away from looking for anything serious. Perhaps it’s a reaction to “Inch” or a rebound from it, maybe a friends-with-benefits arrangement or something like that where she knows there are no long-term prospects and “it won’t make us feel much better”, but hey, they’re both in the doldrums with nothing else going on, might as well use each other’s company (and bodies) as a distraction. Hey, at least it’s a mutual arrangement this time around – they both seem to know what they want and what they don’t want, which is more than it seems like she could have said about the torturous pushing and pulling of two people not wanting the same thing at all throughout most of this record’s front half. The mood has definitely changed as we’ve transitioned over to the back side of this album.
Grade: B+

10. Pills
A few of Stromata‘s most eccentric songs are up next, and this one in particular made me think, “Hey, didn’t St. Vincent do something like this?” Well, yes, she recorded a song by this exact same title, but in 2017, and her take on it was more of a facetious, electropop commercial jingle, whereas Charlotte’s is more of a playful solo piano piece that morphs into a cinematic overture when big, crashing cymbals and a string section come in during the refrain. What the two songs have in common is that they’re both appropriately loopy, describing the various effects of the myriad of pills a lot of us end up taking for various physical and mental health purposes. Sometimes they serve those purposes, but sometimes they backfire and make us crazier, an observation that comes across as both humorous and disturbing depending on the outcome. You might get a little friskier and flirtier that you intended, or you might end up standing in front of an oncoming train. (The sound of said train approaching right after she makes that last point is especially unnerving – dripping water and other background effects also pop up at a few points if you’re listening carefully.) Whether there’s a moral to the story, or whether this is just a list of things that happen to people who take pills, is up for debate – there’s nothing but a meaningless chorus of “Ba ba ba”s to tie each of the verses together. But the oddball nature of this performance certainly fits the subject matter.
Grade: B

11. Just Before Dawn
The album’s most classical-oriented piece is a short but operatic interlude which showcases Charlotte’s background in opera. She hits some unbelievable high notes here, singing in what I assume is German in between sparse refrains of piano and cello. The lyrics translate to “Just before dawn, love and fidelity are like a dream”. It’s beautiful and otherworldly, and I find myself wishing it could have developed beyond what we get to hear in its scant two minutes.
Grade: B

12. Cardboard Ladders
This tranquil piece is where I get the strongest Kate Bush vibes – not that I would say Charlotte’s vocals are quite that eccentric, but there are some moments of calm before/after the storm on a few of Bush’s records that I think this is comparable to. It’s another mostly solo piece, setting aside the rhythmic elements completely and just letting the slowly unfolding piano melody ring out into the clear night sky as Charlotte ponders a bizarre dream she apparently had that involved climbing up a wet, slippery mountain on cardboard ladders and then having no way down – essentially a difficult task leading to a pyrrhic victory with no possible means of return. She gets downright biblical on the chorus, which asks “Tell me, what good is it for a woman to gain the whole world and lose her soul?”, later asking the same question about a man, which is pretty much how several English translations of the Bible phrase it. Things get really interesting as multiple vocal parts begin to branch off from her main vocal, turning the song into a sort of fugue that repeats different snippets of ideas rather than presenting a continuous narrative – “I can’t keep turning my back on the horizon”, “Surrender”, “Remember that I love you”. The overall idea seems to be that she’s taking stock of what matters in life and what she’ll leave behind when it’s all said and done – a pile of cash that no one else can take with them when they die either, or actual love and positive influence that leaves a mark on the world long after she’s gone?
Grade: B+

13. The Dance
One of the album’s most stunning pieces is up next, starting off much like “Keep me in Your Pocket” in the sense that its rhythm is drummed out by hand and Charlotte’s voice is laid bare against it at first, but this time it’s more of a rigid 6/8, less loose and more “waltz-y”, appropriate to the song’s title. Toy piano and multiple layers of vocals are slowly stirred into the mix, with the traditional piano coming in near the end as the final crowning touch, and every new layer stacked on top of this sumptuous gourmet cake just makes me want to swoon all over again. The theme of a love/hate relationship, which I think a lot of the tracks earlier in the album were exploring in one form or another, comes back quite strongly here, and we get the image of two people dancing around each other, never quite connecting because of all the emotional turbulence between them pushing them apart, one of them moving away when the other one is ready to get close. Why they can’t just embrace in a real dance involving some genuine physical contact and emotional intimacy is the question that torments Charlotte here. It’s such a beautiful and yet tragic performance – a decadent dessert to top off the lavish musical meal Stromata has treated us to.
Grade: A+

14. Redeemed
But wait… there’s one more track, and it’s a real beaut as well. The opening strongly reminds me of some of my favorite Vienna Teng songs from her earliest albums – classics like “The Tower” and “Gravity” that built up from lovely, percussive piano melodies into gripping, dramatic crescendos. (It’s a shame the two artists have never crossed paths, at least not as far as I know – they would have made one hell of a double bill if they’d ever toured together.) This one seeks to bring all of the darkness and angst that Charlotte has been through over the course of this album into focus and ask herself where the moral of the story is, what she’s learned from it all to help her live a better life in the future… and she still doesn’t know for sure. Still, she portrays it as a sort of purifying process, a crucible of sorts that she hopes to come out of assured of her worth and her redemption on the other side. This one’s quite elegant in how it builds from the mellow but captivating intro of piano and voice up to a big “piano rock” bridge, with big drums emphasizing each note of her wordless vocalizing, and then the turbulence subsides and the song wraps up more or less like how it started. It ends the album with a sense of peace, that going to all of these angry and scary places hasn’t wrecked the artist’s character – instead it’s left her with a stronger sense of who she does and doesn’t want to be. It’s a thrilling conclusion that makes it worth sticking around to the bittersweet end.
Grade: A

WHAT’S IT WORTH TO ME?
Stromata $1.50
Cut the Cord $2
Drip $1.50
Little Universe $2
Civilized $1.75
A Hopeless Attempt $1.25
Four Walls $1.50
Inch $1.75
Keep Me in Your Pocket $1.25
Pills $1
Just Before Dawn $1
Cardboard Ladders $1.25
The Dance $2
Redeemed $1.75
TOTAL: $21.50

LISTEN FOR YOURSELF:

MORE USEFUL LINKS:
http://www.charlottemartin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CharMarMusic/